Salut!
I finally went up
La Tour Eiffel, which made me feel incredibly touristy but was still worth it. The view is gorgeous, and it was really clear the day I went up so I could see all the way to Montmartre. I must say, though--Paris looks somehow less majestic without the Tour's silhouette. The only time you can't see the Eiffel Tower is when you're on top of it, after all.
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| The view of the Seine from La Tour Eiffel |
Last night was amazing amazing amazing. I went to the Opéra Garnier to see the ballet
Paquita. Not only was I in one of the most spectacular buildings around, but the dancers were phenomenal. Ballet always tugs at my heartstrings a bit. There's something breathtaking about an entire stage of pirouettes or the way male dancers can leap and seem to hover mid-air for a couple of seconds.
The story of
Paquita, from what I could understand, is that of a gypsy girl who falls in love with a noble and protects him from the assassination attempt of her abusive gypsy boyfriend. The happy ending is a bit too perfect: she finds out that--shocker!--she's actually noble too, so they can get married without disturbing the social status quo. The costumes were stunning--lots of flowing gowns and rich colors--and we had phenomenal seats. I can now say that I've seen a ballet at the Opéra from my very own private box.
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| The entryway during intermission |
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| This is the only non-blurry photo I got of the dancers (during bows). Unfortunately, the principal dancers aren't on stage, but you can still see the elaborate costumes and general splendor :) |
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| Paquita and her prince (horrible quality photo, I know... I blame the stage lights) |
Now, onto a completely different subject...
You may or may not remember that this blog is serving as one of the assignments that justifies the half-credit I'm receiving for being a good study abroad student. In order to do that, I need to do more than just post cool pics and brag about French awesomeness--I have to actually write about my internal deliberations, thoughts, and lightbulb moments. There are a couple subjects that I need to address and while I'm pretty sure I've covered them somewhat unintentionally in early posts, I thought it might be good to spell it out a little and reflect on my semester so far.
Prompt: How is the education system you are experiencing different from what you are accustomed to in the U.S.? From your perspective as a student in the U.S. how is it beneficial and disadvantageous?
Consider the perspective of your host-country’s students, how is it beneficial to them? Is it unfavorable to them in any way? Talk about your perceptions of the education system and how your perceptions might be different if you came from a different background.
The French education system is surprisingly different, although I'd been prepared for that by various organizations (WU, CUPA, etc.) before coming here. Students are given much more autonomy in their mastery of material. Instead of getting a syllabus for every class where your weekly reading assignments are listed, the dates for the tests given, and the expectations of the professor spelled out, French students are given--at most!--a list of books that the professor has deemed pertinent to the subject of the class. The list could be as few as four books (like in my poetry class) or as many as 40 (like my history class!). It is up to the student to buy or check out from the library the books that he or she thinks are the most important or helpful and study parallel to the lectures the professor gives in class.
There's no safety net--you can literally 'get away' with not doing a bit of work all semester, and the professor won't know until you bomb that last final or paper. (Though there are usually midterm-esque assignments to at least somewhat prevent this). I think this is beneficial in that the student has more control over their own education. Say the professor is lecturing one day on WWI. The student can go home and read broadly about the subject, or focus on certain countries, the role of women, the influence of the war on the economy--whatever the student finds most interesting. On the downside, I feel like it creates a lot of confusion and results in a more scattered knowledge base. At the end of every class I go to, there are students who approach the professor to double check what they should be reading, what to focus on for next week, if there's going to be an assignment coming up--all of the things a syllabus could clear up. There's less busy work, but there are therefore fewer assignments to count towards your final grade. There's more autonomy, but that leaves more room for student misunderstanding/error. A professor of mine recently chewed out a student who had just given a presentation because he didn't cover everything she thought he should have, when all the professor had done to assign the presentation was hand him the text and tell him what day he was presenting on. I'm sure French students would find the US system horribly over-structured, repressive, and frantic--specific readings due every week? worksheets? weekly quizzes?--but I must say I miss it more than a little. I'll definitely welcome any syllabus I get back at WU this spring.
Prompt: Describe the perceptions of the U.S. in your host country. Are there a range of perceptions or are they general? Are they what you expected? Do host-nationals ask you about the U.S.? What do they ask? What do you think creates these perceptions?
Being American always seems to get some sort of reaction, whether good or bad. Socially, the reputation of Americans (specifically of young women) is that they are easy, provocative, overly outgoing, and continuously cheerful. I've been told that if you walk into a club, you can point out who is American by how... provocatively they dance. There have been men on the metro who certainly seemed to think that I would have sex with them at the drop of a hat because I'm from the States. I can only assume this reputation is due to our overactive film/music/etc industry. We aren't all Britney Spears though.
I've only had two interactions in which US politics was specifically mentioned. The first was not long after I'd gotten here. I went to the store to buy a cell phone, which of course is a complicated and time consuming process in any country and language. The woman working there thankfully spoke some English, so we chatted in Franglish in between discussing buying minutes and using my phone charger. She asked me about Obama--if I liked him, if I had voted for him, if I thought he was handsome... Ok, so it clearly wasn't all about politics. She was very happy that he was in office and seemed to have a very positive outlook on the US. She seemed more curious about my feelings than anything else. Oh, and she thinks Barack is smokin' hott.
The second interaction was with a Swedish exchange student in one of my literature classes. He was talking about Sweden and how they are dealing with the economy and the weakness of the euro and the EU in general. He seemed frustrated at Sweden's position on the political power ladder. He was also curious about how much hope and change I saw in America's future post-Obama, but his feelings toward the US were definitely more complicated than the cell phone girl's. He sees the US as a bully, but a necessary bully who "takes care of things others don't" (even though we tend to stick our noses in places we shouldn't). He thinks that it's time for Europe to take over as the world power but at the same time he is much less opposed to Obama-led US hegemony than Bush-led.
Moral of the story: Go Obama!
Ok, I think that's about enough reflection for one night. Tomorrow, it's time to get a Halloween costume and go grocery shopping... ahh, tis the life :)
