Now that my blog has been removed from Google's black list (not that it's a good time to be complaining about oversight, but really!) I can continue on with the non-spammy task at hand!
The leisurely days have begun to fill up, even though they are still pretty leisurely. Last Wednesday I went to my first official day of internship. I arrived at 10 AM, and eventually Anne-Marie (the theater director), Laurent (finances guy), and Joel (semi-involved guy...he wrote a book about the Carthoucherie) showed up. The theater is really hurting for money, and that Friday they were going to meet with the Ministry to ask for more. The situation was actually perfect for my project. So I sat through the meeting, most of which I got but some of which was a little out of context. It eventually deteriorated into calling the director of the theater next door nasty names (and she's an American...eep!) Then we had lunch for a couple hours, and then they kept talking about the money issues and ignored me. I pretended to read Joel's book for a while, and then I said I had to go, but that they should call me when they needed me. I didn't want to be in the way when they had something serious to discuss, and anyway I had to get out of that windowless room in which about thousand cigarettes had just been smoked. Ick ick ick. The highlight of the day was when one of the actresses said she thought the houses on Long Island, where she has family, were gaudy. I asked if she had seen The Sopranos...did she think the houses looked like theirs? And then they all talked about how big the Sopranos' fridge was, and how it was always completely full. Anne-Marie said the first time she saw an American refrigerator was in 1969, and it had an ice dispenser on the door...she couldn't get over it.
So except for the refrigerator talk, the internship is not at the top of the "awesome" list. But moving on, Friday my classes started, and I missed the first one through no fault of my own: the time was misprinted in the schedule. :P I was lucky to find the professor later on and tell her that I'd be there next week. She was overwhelmingly nice and talked with me forever about the class, offering to arrange interviews for me and all sorts of stuff. Then I actually made it to the next class, where I thought I'd be the only non-native French speaker. I had to go first when we introduced ourselves, but soon it became clear that the French were the minorities in this class. The students are from China, Holland, Bosnia, Greece, Colombia, Brazil, Lebanon, and other places I'm forgetting, so there will be plenty of non-native French. Also, there's no homework. So I'll just sit back and absorb the knowledge.
I also have a book club going (English-speaking...I know, I'm cheating) and a babysitting job (also cheating, since I'm supposed to be talking to the kid in English). It's amazingly easy to speak English in Paris, so I will have to get creative on avoiding it whenever possible. Come to think of it, I shouldn't be writing this blog at all... ;)
And lastly, I have seen two enjoyable plays: Master Class by Terrence McNally and Equus by Peter Shaffer. No Harry Potter in this version, but I think I prefer it that way. And no, those are not French plays! But they were acted in French, so that's ok. I will be writing reviews of them (Aaron) to be posted eventually and to be used in my final report, which will probably be a whopping five pages or so.
Here is a video of a didgeridoo player in front of the Centre Popmidou and more photos.
The leisurely days have begun to fill up, even though they are still pretty leisurely. Last Wednesday I went to my first official day of internship. I arrived at 10 AM, and eventually Anne-Marie (the theater director), Laurent (finances guy), and Joel (semi-involved guy...he wrote a book about the Carthoucherie) showed up. The theater is really hurting for money, and that Friday they were going to meet with the Ministry to ask for more. The situation was actually perfect for my project. So I sat through the meeting, most of which I got but some of which was a little out of context. It eventually deteriorated into calling the director of the theater next door nasty names (and she's an American...eep!) Then we had lunch for a couple hours, and then they kept talking about the money issues and ignored me. I pretended to read Joel's book for a while, and then I said I had to go, but that they should call me when they needed me. I didn't want to be in the way when they had something serious to discuss, and anyway I had to get out of that windowless room in which about thousand cigarettes had just been smoked. Ick ick ick. The highlight of the day was when one of the actresses said she thought the houses on Long Island, where she has family, were gaudy. I asked if she had seen The Sopranos...did she think the houses looked like theirs? And then they all talked about how big the Sopranos' fridge was, and how it was always completely full. Anne-Marie said the first time she saw an American refrigerator was in 1969, and it had an ice dispenser on the door...she couldn't get over it.
So except for the refrigerator talk, the internship is not at the top of the "awesome" list. But moving on, Friday my classes started, and I missed the first one through no fault of my own: the time was misprinted in the schedule. :P I was lucky to find the professor later on and tell her that I'd be there next week. She was overwhelmingly nice and talked with me forever about the class, offering to arrange interviews for me and all sorts of stuff. Then I actually made it to the next class, where I thought I'd be the only non-native French speaker. I had to go first when we introduced ourselves, but soon it became clear that the French were the minorities in this class. The students are from China, Holland, Bosnia, Greece, Colombia, Brazil, Lebanon, and other places I'm forgetting, so there will be plenty of non-native French. Also, there's no homework. So I'll just sit back and absorb the knowledge.
I also have a book club going (English-speaking...I know, I'm cheating) and a babysitting job (also cheating, since I'm supposed to be talking to the kid in English). It's amazingly easy to speak English in Paris, so I will have to get creative on avoiding it whenever possible. Come to think of it, I shouldn't be writing this blog at all... ;)
And lastly, I have seen two enjoyable plays: Master Class by Terrence McNally and Equus by Peter Shaffer. No Harry Potter in this version, but I think I prefer it that way. And no, those are not French plays! But they were acted in French, so that's ok. I will be writing reviews of them (Aaron) to be posted eventually and to be used in my final report, which will probably be a whopping five pages or so.
Here is a video of a didgeridoo player in front of the Centre Popmidou and more photos.
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