New Years, also known as Hogmanay, is the big celebration in Scotland. Actually Hogmanay is just the 31st of december, but the celebration begins several days earlier. Edinburgh starts the holiday off with a torch light procession through the center of the city. It is led by people in viking costumes and bagpipers and involves a terrifying amount of fire. I loved it.
Then theres a street festival with rides, snack stalls, and concerts. You had to buy a wristband to get access to that part of town, it was all roped off. The night of the 31st i met several of Sophies friends on Princes street (she couldnt be there because her band had a gig in bournemouth). The crowds were insane. It took me ages to fight my way to the meeting place, and even then im surprised i actually found my party. There were also a lot of people in costume- my favorites were luigi, buzz light year, and a very convincing jack sparrow. at midnight there were massive fireworks fired from the castle and a laser show, then we went to a club, a kabob stand, and i stumbled home.
That brings me to January. I came down with a bad fever the day after getting back into Aix from Scotland. I spent a few days in bed trying to study for exams but thinking instead about how much my body hurt. Then the day of my first exam fate intervened and we had a freak snow storm. It snowed 14 inches or so, they havent had a storm like that here since 1987, and all of the exams for the next few days were canceled. It was glorious- the french didnt know what to make of it and did silly things like carry umbrellas and wrap their shoes in plastic. I built a snow man and got in a snow ball fight with some random kids in the park. may have still been slightly feverish.
Then elyse visited. We spent a day in marseille, where we watched the sunset over the mediterranean while talking to an australian about whether the french smell like cheese or cheese smells like the french. That night we filleted two entire fish. which were apparently pregnant. so first we had to cut off the heads and scoop out the eggs.
that night was fun.
The next morning we had some bus issues and almost missed our train to paris. I chewed off all of the fingernails on my right hand, i dont think ive ever felt so anxious. We ended up at the train station at 10:40 for our 10:42 train. which turned out to be ten minutes late. saved again.
Paris was wonderful. I could spend several weeks in the louvre! this time we hit up some ancient stuff- hamurabi's code! and the victory steele of naram sin, which i swear we wrote about in art history AP. sadly the islamic wing was closed.
We also rode a ferris wheel and a merry go round.
And here I am, back in Aix, halfway through the year and just now starting a blog.
mardi 27 janvier 2009
lundi 26 janvier 2009
December
December in aix was milder than in the midwest, but still colder than i expected. I hadn't really packed for it, and had to buy an extra blanket and several sweaters.
I had my first (and so far only) oral presentation on the theoretical writings of Charles Jencks in my architecture class right before break, and was very nervous. All i had to do was stand in the front of a room and read my prepared report, but the idea of presenting in french to a room full of native speakers was intimidating. I slurred and stammered my way through it and by the end i felt like i might as well have had 'foreigner' branded on my forehead. oh well.
I had decided before i left the states not to go home for christmas. Instead, I flew to Edinburgh to spend the holidays with my Charlie and Jane, my aunt and uncle. or my grandmothers cousin and his wife, if you want to be technical about it. I arrived there late at night and called only to find that they hadnt received my emails telling them when I would arrive and had been rather worried. Alls well that ends well I guess, though I hated to drop in unannounced!
Edinburgh was warmer than I expected, though very grey. I spent the first few days wandering around the city on my own. I went to the Dean Gallery and the Modern Art Gallery, where I saw a garden sculpture project by the Charles Jencks, who I will never forget after that very memorable presentation!
interesting tid bit: Jencks has created several such landscape art peices in scotland. He also founded the Maggie Center's there, in memory of his late wife Maggie who died of breast cancer. These centers help cancer patients and their families, and Jencks has recruited many famous architects to design them, and has designed landscape art for at least one.
On Christmas eve day Io met up with my friend Dan, another student in provence who lives in Edinburgh, and we went ice skating at the christmas fair.
I have seen Christmas fairs and markets in Nice, Aix, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. I suppose theyre very common here. In Aix, the main street was lined with little wooden huts (complete with fake snow) , where they sold everything from fancy pens and candles to venician carnival masks to chocolate covered pears. My favorites market treats: hot wine and gingerbread. Also popular is barbe à papa, literally translated- papas beard. We call it cotton candy.
Sophie, Charlie and Janes daughter, arrived Christmas eve, and we all went to their friends house for dinner. It was a traditionally latvian meal of fish drop soup, sausage, sour kraut, and mashed potatoes. Afterwards we sang christmas carols, some of them in latin and german.
on homesickness: i expected to be very homesick during the holiday season, since id never been away before. But instead i just felt relaxed and comfortable. I wasn't constantly bombarded with christmas or like anyone was imposing holiday cheer on me. Christmas isn't as extreme in scotland. In fact, as a predominantly protestant country, the celebration of christmas was discouraged for many years for its strong catholic association.
Chritmas day we visited more family in portabello for breakfast and went for a walk along the beach. Then we went to another friends house in Carllops and went for a country walk. The country side in scotland is beautiful. The grass is incredibly green and generally dotted with little white sheep, and the trees were all bare and moody. very muddy though.
We then went back to the house for one of the most amazing dinners of my life.
The cast:
the hosts - a physicist musician and his art historian musician wife, who was wearing a floor length magenta sink robe for the occasion
the guests- ourselves and a french couple, Jean Christoph and Estelle (i just had to share their names). JC was, no joke, a rocket scientist (or aerospace engineer) and a jazz musician. Estelle was a professor of ancient french and barely spoke english. I talked to them a little in french, which was cool.
Before the meal we gathered around the table and popped our crackers. or is it pulled our crackers? opened our crackers? cracked our crackers?? we did whatever it is you do with crackers. inside were little whistles, one for each note of the octave, and our host directed us in christmas carols. the crackers also included paper crowns made out of musical score, which we wore the rest of the evening.
if anyone ever tells you that the british cant cook theyre lying. started with smoked salmon, then turkey, stuffing with sausage and stuffing with chestnuts, brussel sprouts with ginger, cranberries, parsnips, mashed potatoes, all paired with wonderful wine. desert: a flaming brandy pudding with brandy butter and fresh cream.
fun note about the british- all desserts are called puddings. this confused me a lot on my first visit.
the evening ended with music. our hosts were both musicians, and several of their musician friends joined us for music. the orchestra was made up of an oboe, a piano, two recorders, a flute, two violins, a cello, and a guitar. oh, and i 'chimed in' with jingle bells for the grand finale, walking in a winter wonderland. The whole day was magical, I felt like id wandered into hogwarts only to find the cratchets celebrating there.
My dad came to scotland two days later. It was wonderful seeing him. We spent hours walking around Edinburgh talking and catching up. We took a day trip to Glasgow to see the Kelvingrove museum. Its a strange blend of art museum, anthropology museum, and natural history museum. We also went to the scottish national gallery, which is fantastic. I love Raeburn. and tartan pants.
The visit seemed to go very quickly. In the winter, the sun sets in scotland at around 3:30, so we were usually home by dinner time. We visited scotland just a year and a half ago, so we didnt feel pressured to see the sites and act like tourists. It was just wonderfully pleasant, and therefore not very interesting to read about.
Next edition: scottish new years
I had my first (and so far only) oral presentation on the theoretical writings of Charles Jencks in my architecture class right before break, and was very nervous. All i had to do was stand in the front of a room and read my prepared report, but the idea of presenting in french to a room full of native speakers was intimidating. I slurred and stammered my way through it and by the end i felt like i might as well have had 'foreigner' branded on my forehead. oh well.
I had decided before i left the states not to go home for christmas. Instead, I flew to Edinburgh to spend the holidays with my Charlie and Jane, my aunt and uncle. or my grandmothers cousin and his wife, if you want to be technical about it. I arrived there late at night and called only to find that they hadnt received my emails telling them when I would arrive and had been rather worried. Alls well that ends well I guess, though I hated to drop in unannounced!
Edinburgh was warmer than I expected, though very grey. I spent the first few days wandering around the city on my own. I went to the Dean Gallery and the Modern Art Gallery, where I saw a garden sculpture project by the Charles Jencks, who I will never forget after that very memorable presentation!
interesting tid bit: Jencks has created several such landscape art peices in scotland. He also founded the Maggie Center's there, in memory of his late wife Maggie who died of breast cancer. These centers help cancer patients and their families, and Jencks has recruited many famous architects to design them, and has designed landscape art for at least one.
On Christmas eve day Io met up with my friend Dan, another student in provence who lives in Edinburgh, and we went ice skating at the christmas fair.
I have seen Christmas fairs and markets in Nice, Aix, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. I suppose theyre very common here. In Aix, the main street was lined with little wooden huts (complete with fake snow) , where they sold everything from fancy pens and candles to venician carnival masks to chocolate covered pears. My favorites market treats: hot wine and gingerbread. Also popular is barbe à papa, literally translated- papas beard. We call it cotton candy.
Sophie, Charlie and Janes daughter, arrived Christmas eve, and we all went to their friends house for dinner. It was a traditionally latvian meal of fish drop soup, sausage, sour kraut, and mashed potatoes. Afterwards we sang christmas carols, some of them in latin and german.
on homesickness: i expected to be very homesick during the holiday season, since id never been away before. But instead i just felt relaxed and comfortable. I wasn't constantly bombarded with christmas or like anyone was imposing holiday cheer on me. Christmas isn't as extreme in scotland. In fact, as a predominantly protestant country, the celebration of christmas was discouraged for many years for its strong catholic association.
Chritmas day we visited more family in portabello for breakfast and went for a walk along the beach. Then we went to another friends house in Carllops and went for a country walk. The country side in scotland is beautiful. The grass is incredibly green and generally dotted with little white sheep, and the trees were all bare and moody. very muddy though.
We then went back to the house for one of the most amazing dinners of my life.
The cast:
the hosts - a physicist musician and his art historian musician wife, who was wearing a floor length magenta sink robe for the occasion
the guests- ourselves and a french couple, Jean Christoph and Estelle (i just had to share their names). JC was, no joke, a rocket scientist (or aerospace engineer) and a jazz musician. Estelle was a professor of ancient french and barely spoke english. I talked to them a little in french, which was cool.
Before the meal we gathered around the table and popped our crackers. or is it pulled our crackers? opened our crackers? cracked our crackers?? we did whatever it is you do with crackers. inside were little whistles, one for each note of the octave, and our host directed us in christmas carols. the crackers also included paper crowns made out of musical score, which we wore the rest of the evening.
if anyone ever tells you that the british cant cook theyre lying. started with smoked salmon, then turkey, stuffing with sausage and stuffing with chestnuts, brussel sprouts with ginger, cranberries, parsnips, mashed potatoes, all paired with wonderful wine. desert: a flaming brandy pudding with brandy butter and fresh cream.
fun note about the british- all desserts are called puddings. this confused me a lot on my first visit.
the evening ended with music. our hosts were both musicians, and several of their musician friends joined us for music. the orchestra was made up of an oboe, a piano, two recorders, a flute, two violins, a cello, and a guitar. oh, and i 'chimed in' with jingle bells for the grand finale, walking in a winter wonderland. The whole day was magical, I felt like id wandered into hogwarts only to find the cratchets celebrating there.
My dad came to scotland two days later. It was wonderful seeing him. We spent hours walking around Edinburgh talking and catching up. We took a day trip to Glasgow to see the Kelvingrove museum. Its a strange blend of art museum, anthropology museum, and natural history museum. We also went to the scottish national gallery, which is fantastic. I love Raeburn. and tartan pants.
The visit seemed to go very quickly. In the winter, the sun sets in scotland at around 3:30, so we were usually home by dinner time. We visited scotland just a year and a half ago, so we didnt feel pressured to see the sites and act like tourists. It was just wonderfully pleasant, and therefore not very interesting to read about.
Next edition: scottish new years
dimanche 25 janvier 2009
Catching up
I have been living in France for almost five months, and I am just now starting a blog. I guess better late than never!
So some catch up:
I am spending the academic year in Aix-en-Provence France through a program at IU that also includes participants from University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin. I am taking classes at the Université de Provence, in french, with other french students.
I arrived in France late August, and it was hot beyond belief. I had two suitcases which weighed 50 pounds each, and into which i had stuffed my entire life. And i was tired and cranky.
I spent most of september settling in: opening a bank account, buying a cell phone, and finding the nearest boulangerie. Meanwhile, I had a 3 week intensive language course which covered french language and politics.
It was still ridiculously hot. And I have no air conditioning, and I live on the fourth floor. However (after changing rooms, which was an ordeal), i also have a fantastic view of Mt Saint Victoire, which was made famous by Cezanne, who painted it obsessively.
Class started in October. The university system here is unlike anything i have ever experienced before. Classes werent listed online for some departments until the second week of the semester. Class times and rooms were changed with little or no warning, and every department seemed to operate on a completely different schedule. That first week i showed up at several classes only to find an empty classroom and no explanation. When I finally did find a class that was meeting, i found that i couldnt understand the professor, and didnt actually know what the class was about.
It took me almost three weeks to work out a final class schedule. Which then changed due to a problem with credits, forcing me to jump into a new class almost halfway through the semester.
After a lot of frustration, I ended up taking Psychologie Cognitif, Art après 1945, Expression écrite, Phonetiques, Thèorie d'architecture du XIXe et XXe siecle, and Art Musulman.
During a long weekend in November, I took a train with two other Americans to Strausburg, on the other side of france. The city is right on the German border, and my friends and I were actually able to walk across a bridge into Germany, where we spent a lovely afternoon eating Bretzals. Highlights from the trip: the cathedral, second tallest in france, and spetzle, a noodle-ish dish that i ate with melted gouda.
I also spent a long weekend in Paris. I went with two other art history majors and we absolutely saturated ourselves in culture. Of course we visitied the Louvre, where I almost cried out of excitement in the large format french painting room. I had had a lecture on almost every painting in the room. And in the musée d'orsay we saw a pastel exhibit called Le mystère et l'éclat. I almost couldn't talk afterwards I was so overwhelmed. They had wonderful peices by the big names- Degas, Cassat, Manet and Monet. But they also had some fantastic peices by artists id never heard of- Blanche, Guillaumin, and Lévy-Dhurmer to name just a couple. And Redon!!! they had several Redon pastels!!!
We spent a day at Versaille, where we caught a Jeff Koons exhibit. I have never been a big jeff koons fan, but his work fit right in at versaille. I've never visitied a more ridiculous place. I felt like i was inside of a jewelry box and couldnt get out- every inch of the place was either guilded, carved, covered in velvet, or painted with naked cherubs. And it just kept going. We got lost in the gardens several times, and then accidently stumbled upon marie antoinettes incredibly creepy play village. I think the most interesting part of that visit was seeing a group of japanese women in kimonos getting their pictures taken in the baroque french palace with their obnoxiously high-tech cameras.
We also made it to en exhibit at the Grand Palais- Picasso et ses Maitres. It was incredibly crowded, and honestly i was more overwhelmed by the 'masters' than by the picassos. they had ingres odalesque, a couple of great Manet portraits, some Cezannes, even an El Greco. they did not however have Los Meninas, after which Picasso made forty or fifty variations. instead they just projected it on the wall.
December meant christmas, but more on that some other day!
So some catch up:
I am spending the academic year in Aix-en-Provence France through a program at IU that also includes participants from University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin. I am taking classes at the Université de Provence, in french, with other french students.
I arrived in France late August, and it was hot beyond belief. I had two suitcases which weighed 50 pounds each, and into which i had stuffed my entire life. And i was tired and cranky.
I spent most of september settling in: opening a bank account, buying a cell phone, and finding the nearest boulangerie. Meanwhile, I had a 3 week intensive language course which covered french language and politics.
It was still ridiculously hot. And I have no air conditioning, and I live on the fourth floor. However (after changing rooms, which was an ordeal), i also have a fantastic view of Mt Saint Victoire, which was made famous by Cezanne, who painted it obsessively.
Class started in October. The university system here is unlike anything i have ever experienced before. Classes werent listed online for some departments until the second week of the semester. Class times and rooms were changed with little or no warning, and every department seemed to operate on a completely different schedule. That first week i showed up at several classes only to find an empty classroom and no explanation. When I finally did find a class that was meeting, i found that i couldnt understand the professor, and didnt actually know what the class was about.
It took me almost three weeks to work out a final class schedule. Which then changed due to a problem with credits, forcing me to jump into a new class almost halfway through the semester.
After a lot of frustration, I ended up taking Psychologie Cognitif, Art après 1945, Expression écrite, Phonetiques, Thèorie d'architecture du XIXe et XXe siecle, and Art Musulman.
During a long weekend in November, I took a train with two other Americans to Strausburg, on the other side of france. The city is right on the German border, and my friends and I were actually able to walk across a bridge into Germany, where we spent a lovely afternoon eating Bretzals. Highlights from the trip: the cathedral, second tallest in france, and spetzle, a noodle-ish dish that i ate with melted gouda.
I also spent a long weekend in Paris. I went with two other art history majors and we absolutely saturated ourselves in culture. Of course we visitied the Louvre, where I almost cried out of excitement in the large format french painting room. I had had a lecture on almost every painting in the room. And in the musée d'orsay we saw a pastel exhibit called Le mystère et l'éclat. I almost couldn't talk afterwards I was so overwhelmed. They had wonderful peices by the big names- Degas, Cassat, Manet and Monet. But they also had some fantastic peices by artists id never heard of- Blanche, Guillaumin, and Lévy-Dhurmer to name just a couple. And Redon!!! they had several Redon pastels!!!
We spent a day at Versaille, where we caught a Jeff Koons exhibit. I have never been a big jeff koons fan, but his work fit right in at versaille. I've never visitied a more ridiculous place. I felt like i was inside of a jewelry box and couldnt get out- every inch of the place was either guilded, carved, covered in velvet, or painted with naked cherubs. And it just kept going. We got lost in the gardens several times, and then accidently stumbled upon marie antoinettes incredibly creepy play village. I think the most interesting part of that visit was seeing a group of japanese women in kimonos getting their pictures taken in the baroque french palace with their obnoxiously high-tech cameras.
We also made it to en exhibit at the Grand Palais- Picasso et ses Maitres. It was incredibly crowded, and honestly i was more overwhelmed by the 'masters' than by the picassos. they had ingres odalesque, a couple of great Manet portraits, some Cezannes, even an El Greco. they did not however have Los Meninas, after which Picasso made forty or fifty variations. instead they just projected it on the wall.
December meant christmas, but more on that some other day!
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