Rhapsody in Winter

I'm sitting in a café in which I'm becoming a frequenter, watching it become Christmas. I don't have my camera so unfortunately I can't take a picture, but there is a centrepiece on the ceiling in the middle of the café, and it's just a huge collection of branches, hanging spheres, hanging pillow hearts, white twinkly lights, and lights that look like icicles—complete with a dripping effect. The woman putting up the decorations is concerned that small children, on the shoulders of their parents, may hit their head.

Since my last update, I've started to feel a little bit homesick, what with the holidays happening and everything. But because I've been away from home a few times, I know how it feels and I know how to deal with it (although I've never been away from home for the winter holidays, but I think I'm doing a good job of keeping myself occupied).

As a student of literature, I think the most valuable understanding I gained is to see tragedy as the elaborate premier work of an artist and happiness as a later, more seemingly simple or modern project, but all the same perhaps more advanced, that you can only really understand without seeing the preceding work, first. And if you've experienced it out of order, it doesn't make sense until you've seen both. That is, in order to feel deeply,you have to feel deeply in all directions. And, once you have felt deeply in all directions, you can anticipate that the directions are moving on—a feeling is never permanent but only a moment on its way to becoming something else.

I guess what this is meaning for me right now in this moment, is the fact that being an ocean away from home is both so heartbreaking, and also the most heartfreeing. I don't know if it's just because my brain is working to hard on new things that it doesn't have time to give way to daily happenings but only to big successes and failures? As my friend here, Ashley, says, "we're supposed to fuck up"—with language, our first job, living as a foreigner. Maybe it's just the permission to fuck up that I find comforting.

More on this at a later date.

For Thanksgiving, I made myself a Thanksgiving-inspired sandwich and watched a little bit of "It's a Wonderful Life" after I came home from work, and then skyped with my family a little bit. I enjoyed watching my grandparents fascination with the videocam.

I also made a basic presentation for some of my students on Thanksgiving. I elaborated on it with other videos and links.

http://prezi.com/ukyhmelcgorf/thanksgiving/

When I first ask my students to describe what they know about Thanksgiving, they think Thanksgiving and Noël are the same. Well I sorted that one out! Now all my students know the truth—about how most of the pilgrims died the first winter they were here, how we had a brief period of peace with the native americans but then killed them all, and also a little bit about, erm, Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, the Macy's Day parade, and what a harvest feast is, which is more than most Americans know. 

The day after Thanksgiving I had a full day at the collège which was glorious as usual. My classes in the morning went well, and then in the afternoon, as usual, I worked with the students on the CabART project. We've already translated their scripts into English, and written a song in English inspired by the writing of Adele, so, this time, we started rehearsing the scene in English and I helped them with blocking, gesture, pronunciation, etc. This part of my day is so amazing because I feel like I really get to put to use all of my interests—music, language, translation, theatre, discussion, culture, etc. It's like the dream job I didn't think existed! One student asked if I would be returning next year and I almost got teary thinking about how I wouldn't be there.

(Quand même, sometimes I listen to things like Barber's Adagio for Strings and my heart says but why aren't you looking at scores and lying on your bed putting music into your head all day?)

Then, that night I had a Thanksgiving celebration with the other American assistants, some native Frenchies, and other assistants from England and various other countries. Everyone went around to talk about what they were thankful for which was really nice. I practiced a lot of French.

Then, Saturday night, I had another Thanksgiving with an ancien assistant who now lives in Orléans, Emily, and her French friends which was also wonderful. She did a wonderful job making many traditional dishes, including pumpkin pie!

At the end of the weekend, the music teacher at the collège, Stèphane, invited me over for tea and tarte with him and his wife, which was really nice. We talked for a long time in French and talked about traveling to different parts of France. I've also started writing a song with the kids, which he is is composing the melody to, so we looked at that and he's going to have me sing it for the kids in the next couple of weeks which is really neat.

As far as my language process, there's nothing like graduating from a prestigious liberal arts college with lots of ideas on subjects like music and literature and society, and then feeling like you can't express any of them. But, it's getting better. As I meet more people, I've been put in more and more situations to speak French more and more continuously.

Here are some pictures from the weekend before Thanksgiving:

Waiting for the trams to restart in the morning...ooops.

I went to choral rehearsal last night and that was also really good. There is a woman there who is really kind to me and always telling me about musical things I can participate in and driving me home. The only thing about chorus here, is, I still can't get used to when the conductor counts us in "trois, quatre" since I'm trained to jump after "three, four."