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!
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire