De Carlisle à la Ville Rose

Day: February 26, 2013

Editorial

The Mosaic students on top of a parking garage in Toulouse
(Photo: Dorian Simon-Rouard)

Dear readers,

Finally a regular rhythm…but not for long. The students in Dickinson’s Mosaic program have arrived! Participating in the Mosaic program organized by Prof. Borges, they are applying their studies and research on Mediterranean Migration to a trip abroad, starting in Toulouse. Their hands-on experience will continue in Morocco and will finish in Spain. Based on their first few days in Toulouse, full of encounters with immigrant workers, experts in the field, the “pink city” and the Dickinson in France students, this trip will bring lots of fruitful and animated discoveries.

The students who arrived in September and January have been their guides in discovering the city, which at this point has become their own, and they’ve also added new cultural and academic experiences to their baggage.

Enjoy!

Anna Ciriani Dean

The Pyrenees

On January 25th and 26th, the Dickinson in France students who’ve been here since September or January took off on their first group excursion of the semester.

Far from Toulouse, they discovered another aspect of the landscape and life in France: life in the mountains.

Despite the fog, their arrival in Estarvielle in the Louron valley was marked by the majestical presence of the mountains. Even the view from the Mountain Center where we stayed was incredible.

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The first day, the group visited the little chapel in Estarvielle. To get in, Alew had to shovel snow off the pathway and once inside, he and Sam sang for us.

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In the afternoon, the group split into two parts: one participated in a cooking workshop – preparing garbure – and the other discovered a local café, chez Josette, and took the time to speak to the owner and to her clients.

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Then, the entire group went on a walk around the lake. Here, their guide explained the landscape and showed them how snowflakes are made through a small magnifying glass. The walk ended with a fun snowball fight.

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After such an active day, with another stop at a producer of frênette, a local beverage, we enjoyed the delicious garbure that the students had prepared in the morning.

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After a good night’s sleep, we took off the next day for a snow shoe hike!

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To finish up the excursion, the students discovered a cheese farm at the Fromagerie du Diable de Mont (Mont’s Devil).

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The students returned to Toulouse, their bags full of sheep cheese and jam.

              Photos: Anna Ciriani Dean and Monica Meeks

My Volunteer Work at SUPAERO – Alex Toole

A strong point of my time in Toulouse until now is my volunteer experience.  On Tuesdays, I go to SupAéro, a university of aeronautic engineering and space in Toulouse.  The university has a debate team, which is taught by an Irish professor.  I debated in high school, and thus during each session of my volunteering work I help the professor teach the skill of debating to the SupAéro students.  The volunteering intrigues me because all the competitions are in English.  Thus, it is necessary for the students to learn English before they do debating.  Each session, the team divides in two and we practice arguing the two sides of the motion.  I am always impressed by the capacity of the students to debate in English with fluidity and eloquence.  To me, the rules of the French Debating Association (FDA), specifically the rule that stipulates that all the competitions must be in English, seem to be culturally divergent.  I had the impression that the French have an unbreakable pride of the French language, but debating, an intellectual exercise with ancient origins, is in English.  Although at the time I didn’t understand the linguistic inconsistency, I now know that the usage of English indicates the will of the French to open the minds of the students, and to teach them a language like English, which is used around the world for business and diplomacy.  I reflected on debating at SupAéro and deduced that the engagement of the French universities regarding debate illustrates the strength of the longstanding tradition in France of intellectual discourse.

A Love Story – Monica Meeks

You may or may not be surprised by this post. I’ve known it for a long time, but resisted to say it out loud. But the truth is, I’ve found love in France, as so many people do. This man I’ve found is so inviting, and always willing to spend time with me – I see him two or three times a weeks, and even when he has plenty of other things to do, he always finds a few hours just for me. He gets along tremendously with my friends and doesn’t mind when I bring them along to hang out. He makes me feel so many emotions – like I’m traveling the world, like I’m home in America, like I’m learning something new, like I’m safe from all evil things.

His name is the Cinéma Gaumont.

It’s true, folks – although I always had an interest in film and even dreamed of being a filmmaker when I was younger, it’s only been in France that my love for film as an art form has really flourished. Part of it is the fact that going to the movies is just so cheap. It’s less than 5 euro for anyone under 26 years old. It’s often cheaper than going to a museum, a concert, or even out to a bar for a drink. Your Friday class got cancelled? Why not check out that film that’s been in all Americans’ Facebook statuses for the last three months? Bored on a Sunday? There’s that new French romantic comedy your host mom wants to see – you might learn some new slang. Feel like hanging out with friends, but too cheap to go out for dinner and drinks? A slasher thriller awaits you.

At home, I averaged going to the cinema maybe two or three times a year. Now I go two or three times a week. I don’t discriminate between American and French films (the only two types shown at Gaumont – for Spanish/Italian/other nationalities, you have to go to Utopia). I only insist that I see them in the original language. It would have been an abomination to watch Django dubbed in French. However, I also pride myself on the fact that I can understand a French movie without subtitles, which was not true when I got here. And given how much the French government supports cinema – there’s a law requiring that at least 40% of films in movie theaters are of French origin – I’d feel silly not to take advantage of expanding my cinematic background.

One thing my study abroad program has really pushed is an appreciation for fine arts. Last semester we had tons of dance performances, art museum visits, and piano concerts which we were required to see. While I was grateful that all these lovely experiences were included in the cost of the program, I also had to admit that viewing the 10,000th interpretation of a Virgin Mary painting and watching bizarre dance performances without any music were often less than inspiring to me. However, cinema is an art form like any other – moving images, artistic shots, human portraits, all for the sake of telling a beautiful/heartbreaking/awe-inspiring story.

Cinema is my art form. I can only go to so many art museums without getting terribly bored, but I can always go see another movie. And I don’t just mean big blockbusters and Academy-Award nominees like Lincoln (which I saw this week.) I also mean Alceste à Bicyclette and Main dans la Main and Kirikou. I mean old Hitchcock movies being played as reruns. I mean some film I’ve never seen a preview for, but that looked decent, and I have a few free hours. I’m happy to regularly support the art form that I most enjoy, knowing that it will be much more expensive to do so when I go home.

When I leave France, a piece of my heart will be left at the Cinéma Gaumont, and I intend to leave it there. Sometimes you find love in the most unexpected places.

French Obsession #1 – Nina Kuntz

The thing about living abroad is the entire experience can sometimes feel like a dream, or, more often, like an alternate reality. The entire cultural paradigm is shifted, and the rituals and caveats of daily life that come with the familiarity of home are easily swept away, having more habitual value than intrinsic necessity. However, my research involving cheese, ravishing dark chocolate cakes every night with dinner, red wine, sausage and elaborate cream filled pastries has confirmed my suspicion that the calories consumed versus calories burned rule still applies, no matter where you are in the world.

So, I signed up for the gym, or the “sport room” if you translated the expression directly from French. This might seem to imply that I wanted to get some exercise, lose weight, or introduce a healthy balance into my life, none of which I give a foutre about. If I did care, I would have gotten a gym membership five months ago and abstained from regularly eating portions that would hardly fit into my carry-on suitcase. But who wants to do that? I signed up with two of my French girlfriends, thereby snagging another opportunity to speak French, hang out, and not do my homework. All three of those things are decidedly more French than working out, so I felt culturally justified in signing up. I even sprang out of bed on a Sunday morning (the day allotted the most homework, and therefore the most motivation to do something, anything, else) only to find that the gym is CLOSED on SUNDAYS!

…which leads me to French Person Obsession #1: Not Doing Work. This national pastime is swell when you’re the one not doing work, and infuriating when other people aren’t doing work. Like when gym owners don’t open their gyms on Sundays. But honestly, the fact that I tried to go to the gym on a Sunday was so American of me. Any French person could explain to you that this was not only incomprehensible but abominable because a) why would I think the gym would be open, b) why would I want to exercise, and most importantly, c) why would I try to do anything on a Sunday? What French person is going to work on a Sunday? What French person is going to go to the gym on a Sunday?

This decidedly secular country has clung on to the Catholic traditions of it’s past, closing everything on Sundays and taking three- to four-day weekends for obscure Catholic holidays practically every other weekend. Everyone, from university students to people with actual jobs, nearly riots if anyone suggests that they take one hour and fifty minutes for their lunch break instead of two hours each weekday. And less than an hour and a half for lunch? How can anyone be expected to eat in that amount of time!? It would be physically impossible, not to mention degrading. My classmates groan and protest if they are assigned a whopping ten pages of homework reading a week. I’m not exaggerating: this happened each of the three times a professor ever tried to give homework at French university. Nor am I exaggerating about the length of the French lunch break. Now compare the idea of going to work on a Sunday to all that.

I should have chain smoked and watched rugby games on TV.

My Trip to Barcelona – Molly Leach

After the marathon

I just got back from spending the weekend in Barcelona, Spain to run a half marathon. Man was it a weekend of firsts! A very fun experience leaving me wanting to go back! Not only was the city incredible, it was really neat seeing another european country that i can mow compare to france. One thing that really struck me however was the varying geographies between France and Spain. France really has a flat landscape. Yes, there are small rolling hills, it’s not like the Midwest of the US, but I’m general it is pretty flat. As soon as I crossed the border into Spain, I found myself surrounded by mountains and hills all taunting me to go hike up them. The plant life was also different, going from lush green to a more tropical Mediterranean feel. It’s interesting how the geography is so different between two countries and cities that are so close to each other. I would love it if Toulouse had more mountains and hills, but oh we’ll, I’ll just have to go back to the Pyrenees.

Hot Chocolate and Cupcakes – Sarah Giardini

I never thought it was possible to find a hot chocolate better than Serendipity’s in New York but I found the best in Toulouse. Here, the hot chocolates aren’t made with powder like in the US. It is pure melted chocolate. They come in many flavors like vanilla, chantilly, cinnamon, and coffee. In a little café, I had a coffee flavored hot chocolate and it was magnificent. I was necessary to eat it with a spoon since it was so thick. It is the little differences like this that totally change a simple experience. I am looking forward to spring but in the meantime I’m happy to drink lots of hot chocolates.

 

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