La vie n'est plus la même

I've been wanting to write another entry for about a week now, but life keeps overwhelming me, to sound as cliché as possible. I've actually been overwhelmed with clichés themselves this past week.

I'm not really sure where to start, so I'll guess I'll pull a Julie Andrews and start at the very beginning. I'm going to have to force myself to alternate between writing here and reading "La Gastronomie à la Renaissance: La Memoire du Goût." Oh joy. I've got 52 pages, plus 12 of another reading, and a paper all for thursday. Technically very doable, but with my motivation or lack thereof for classes right now, plus all the other things I have and want to think about, plus my trip to Scotland Thursday night, well, its not ideal.

So, Thursday night, Valentine's Day, I had the amazing experience of being able to go the the Opéra Garnier, the paris opera house, for the presentation of Pina Bausch's "Orphée et Eurydice" (Orpheus and Eurydice, not much diff in french) danced by the Paris Opera Ballet. It was an "Opéra Dansé" so there was a live orchestra, live opera singers, and the dancers. I was on the verge of tears by the end, it was so beautiful. Bausch's choreography was insanely beautiful. I saw influences of Graham, Limon, and romantic ballet in her style, though I have no idea if she was actually influenced by all of them. I also noticed some similarities between her choreography and mine, which though obviously only coincidental, made me smile, lol. So, the opera/ballet was in four acts, and the three main characters - Orphée, Eurydice, and Amour - were played each by a dancer and a singer. It was beautiful to see the two juxtaposed on stage. The costumes were gorgeous.The repetition of many of the movement sequences was gorgeous and not at all redundant. Bausch works amazingly with groups of dancers, unison, and clumps. The very first sequence was a gorrrrrgeous wave-like series of movements in a clump. Found a picture online:

Alright, I could go on and on about that, but I will stop there. This review hits it pretty accurately and has some gorgeous photos: Review I bought a program, despite the cost, as one of my few 'souvenirs.' I dont' feel it necessary to get any souvenirs of being here really...I don't know what I would get, since I feel less and less like a tourist each day, just a temporary resident~ Pictures and wine labels will work just fine for my scrapbooks~ And fruit stickers for dad, of course.

So Saturday night I went out with a group of my girl friends. One of their friends who coaches a soccer team here put us on the list for this party/club on a boat on the Seine. We had a great night, though I think I'll write the details down in my journal instead of here~ :-P

Last night, definitely one of the major highlights, if not the best part of this experience so far, was our "atelier de cuisine." We had a cooking lesson at Mme Chouard's home with her mother "Mme Dobet." We made a three course meal with her for us and her whole family. She made a big deal when she foundout I was vegetarian because we were making duck (but i knew this when we signed up, but all of the ateliers involved meat, and i just wanted to cook :P), it was cute, and she got me a separate dish to make without duck, which was very nice of her. When they were taking the skin off the duck, I could see Dad sitting there cringing, or at least throwing it in the oven or frying pan and eating that by itself. Instead it went in the trash can. After making the meal, which took a good long time, but really was very simple, we began by having aperitifs and snacks in the salon. I discovered my love of cashews which i previously hated, and we had a kir of crème de cassis and white wine. We had a wonderful conversation with Mme Chouard who we found we had already met! Such a funny coincidence, she was the teacherof the french students who we rendez-vous-ed with the first week. Then we started the meal with a tartelette "mini-pizza" with this AMAZING homemade sauce that their family has patented, made of tomatoes, ground pistachios, basil, and olive oil. To die for. and we topped them with goat cheese. so delish, plus a little side salad of endive and a red lettuce. Then the main course was the duck, or in my case, mashed potatoes and sauteed mushrooms with too much butter and cream to imagine. hyper-mega-giga-bon, as their youngest son would say. Then for dessert we made coconut flan, ahhhhh so yummy, plus mini-apple tarts that we made w/the extra dough.

An amazing meal, and the best conversation I've had since I've been here. Since Mme Chouard is an English professor we had many funny talks about mis-pronunciations, and a few ourselves which were fun to laugh at. From Lindsay's ordering of "Wahn" (She tried to order white wine, "vin blanc" but instead tried to add "white" to the front of "vin") to Katie's "couper les scènes" (to cut scenes, as in post-production film work) which came out as "couper les seins" or "cut the breasts." made for good entertainment. Then there was the boy who asked his homestay mom for "preservatifs" for his bread for breakfast, not realizing that in french that meant condoms, not jam. haha. This is why I love languages.

And at the end of the night she even signed and gave us copies of their family Christmas cards as mementos!! :D So cute! Their family is so cute, I do wish I lived there instead of here. They have 4 kids, three of which are boys - 7, 11, and 18, and a girl who's high school aged. Their whole house is red and yellow, so bright and cheery.

Alright well this is long enough, I'll save my story from tonight for another post, though the title of this post really refers to it a lot ("life-changing" as best translated into french)~ Long day/days ahead. Bonne nuit!

P.S. Realized my eternal optimist is coming back. It has of course been up and down as usual, but being who I am, I tend to push all the yucky, depressing things aside. #1 My ipod broke the other day. I know. Disastrous. I had even gone for a run, i was actually exercising here! blah, so much for trying to be good, haha. Anyways, I ended up having to restore it, aka wipe out all my music and reload it, meaning i lost all the songs that werent on my computer anymore. Oh well, worse things could happen. At least its not still stuck constantly restarting itself, only to make it to the apple screen where it would click loadly and blank out. grrr. And #2 my archaeology class. ugh. Not only is all of the vocab foreign to me, but when i went to talk to her afterword she blabbed so fast i barely caught a word and had to stand there staring at her in confusion. i'm sure she thought i was an idiot, or maybe better, mute. Anyways, i realized the bright side of the situation when she wouldnt let anyone else in the class write a paper except me, they all have to do exposés/oral presentations. ahhh, i would die.