Bonjour à tout! I have decided to keep a small blog on my trimester in Paris, where I am currently studying French language and literature. I will stay in France until June, and I hope to update on a weekly basis and share some of my adventures. Already, just one week in, I find it difficult to fully describe my experience here, but I will give small resumés and hope that you find them interesting!
First, I'm sure many of you heard about the confrontations between the police and several hundred metro-goers last Wednesday at the Gare du Nord station, and I want to assure you (ehem, Mom) that the situation has returned to normal. As any Parisian will tell you, demonstrations (les manifestations) are a fact of life in a city with a reputation of revolt to mantain, and they take them in stride. That being said, the riots Wednesday were more serious than most because they involved violence. More importantly, allegations of the excessive use of force by police worry many French people and, as the man "responsible" for the riots was not a French citizen, the incident is being tied to larger issues of immigration and government treatment of illegals. So, I find it very interesting that, the day after the incident, Le Monde printed an interview stating that, "When the police use force to restrain a population, they are in fact weak and suffer from a lack of legitimacy in the eyes of the population." The man interviewed went on to say that, in his opinion, the police are at risk of forgetting that they serve the people rather than the administration. In light of the upcoming elections, it will be interesting to see the political fallout of the riots - particulary for Nicholas Sarkozy, the candidate for Chirac's right-wing party and the former Minister of the Interior. Last night, I learned from a French student that Sarkozy wants to increase defense spending and expand the police presence within France. The student, named Gabrielle, told me that she is completely against Sarkozy's plan because increases in police armament frighten her - she finds them unnecessary ("Who attacked us?") and very troubling because they increase the number of weapons in a country completely lacking a gun culture; she'd rather her money to go to culture and education - "that which makes France a great and civilized nation" - rather than weaponery and internal defense. The first round of elections are in just three weeks, so we'll see what happens.
And now on to lighter topics! I've had a wonderful first week in Paris. My trip last year with Dad permits me to skip a lot of the prerequisite tourist visits and go straight to acquainting myself with the city in a more meaningful way. To that end, I've wandered the city for hours, just taking everything in and trying to make sense of la vie parisienne. I love the gardens in particular: les Jardins du Luxembourg, les Jardins des plantes, les Tuilleries, and all the little squares and hidden gardens that one finds throughout the city. As soon as I get myself organized, I'll go running in one of them as I've happily discovered that Parisians do in fact jog, just not on sidewalks or in residential areas. From wandering around, I already have some favorite streets and quartiers in Paris (5eme arronndissement near the gardens and the Pantheon, the Marais, Boulevard St. Michel and the Latin Quarter), and I hope to discover many others. This evening, I walked through the Marais, the Place des Vosgues, and then through l'Ile St. Louis to Notre Dame - truly magnifique. I'm experiencing the more residential, day-to-day side of the city as well through my time at my host home in Vavnes, which is a quieter residential district one metro stop outside the formal delination of Paris.
My grand accomplishment of the day is that I watched a true French film in a French cinema, no subtitles, just a part of the audience like any other Parisian. The film was Ensemble, C'est tout, which is a current film with Audrey Tautou. It was wonderful movie, and I understood almost everything! If it comes to the US, I definitely recommend it.
And pour finir, some little amusing tidbits.
- In the Vanves metro station, they have posters against "le stationnement sauvage" - literally, wild parking.
- In most Paris gardens, there are signs that say "pelouse au repos," aka the grass is resting so don't walk on it.
- I have seen TexMex restaurants in Paris. They exist. I almost did a double-take when I saw the first on on rue Montparnasse.
- My 10-year-old host brother could not understand me when I said Harry Potter in plain English - I had to use a nice thick French accent.
- You do not turn a cell phone on and off, you illuminate (alluminer) and extinguish (éteindre) it. And when it runs out of battery, it has given up its soul (la batterie rend l'âme).
Bon, c'est tout for the moment. Bis bis à tout!
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