for the curious, the adventurous, for those who still write letters:

My address:

Caroline Beranek

1 Rue de la Roche d'Argent

Bâtiment A, n° 226

86000 Poitiers

FRANCE

Yep, I live on "Silver Rock Road", or "Rock of Money Road", depending on how much of a jerk I feel like being about translating it. At any rate, the pub that's attached to the building is called The Silver Rock, or something along those lines.

In other news:

Poitiers seems to think it's springtime. It's currently 12°C, the sunshine and the showers coming and going every half hour or so. More than once I've been seduced out for a run, only to be caught in the throes of an overwhelmingly windy burst of rain. Poitiers is an overwhelmingly windy city in general. I've been running trough the neighborhoods in centre ville, partly to get to know my city, but also in a [futile] attempt to escape the wind. My Alabama self can't run comfortably in anything other than Soffe shorts... I can't decide if I prefer the comments of people I pass or the stares/shouts/occasional honks from cars. Such are my troubles.

Also, some punks thought it'd be a good idea to put a coffee machine on the first floor of my building. And, for those of you who do not live in France, let it be known that machine coffee in France is still 10 times better than anything I've found in the states, even in Oregon. So, now, for 40¢ a cup, I can inundate myself with café allongé whenever the urgency strikes me. That's not to say I've any plans to slow my tea consumption, only that now coffee is definitely making a re-emergence in my life. I was recently treated to coffee from a percolator, which was absolutely wonderful, fresh, and strong. I've also discovered something called Café Bonbon, which is a shot of espresso poured over sweetened, condensed milk. Yum.

And, as always, I am agonizing over when to go back to Oregon. Rumor has it that exams here are done by the middle of May, which sets me to traveling about a month sooner than I thought. [Oh, Oregon, you and your trimester system, how you've screwed with my perception of the academic calendar!] I've developed these fantasy bike rides that I want to conquer [Still no luck on the bike front here], and the more I think about it, the more it feels like the Country Fair would be the best way for me to reunite myself with Oregon.

Hmmm...

hair...

After months and months of agonizing over the "cut, comb, or maintain" question, I've decided to sit down and repair this relationship the right way.

Here's to being narcissistic enough to believe people are reading this.

What's up, blog?

Uh. Hmm. I've been mostly writing in my real [pen + paper] journal lately. I've spent a lot of time obsessing over the possible interpretations of the phrase "the difference is in the details."

My and Lucy's attempts to "faire des soldes" resulted in us going in halfsies on a 500-piece High School Musical 3 puzzle, and then putting it together in something like an hour and a half. It was a pretty lovely way to spend a Saturday night. Sunday I finally went to Le Musée Sainte Croix with Alex and a friend of hers. The museum is just across the street from where I live, yet it was my first time there. It was deceptively huge; we spent close to three hours there and didn't make it to every part. Luckily, all French public museums are free for European Union students and people who're under 26. All museums includes places like the Louvre, le Centre Pompidou, and le Château de Versailles in Paris. Plus, almost every "major" town/city in France has its own "check out how epic we are!" museum. I went to the one in Angoulême with a friend a while back, and it, too, was surprisingly comprehensive.

After however many years of studying French [4, now, it would seem], I think I am finally beginning to understand how to use the partitive. We're working on it in the linguistique class that I'm taking, and, at long last, I think I actually "get it". I was reading La Nausée earlier, and every time I can across du, de la, de l', or des I seemed to be able to make the distinction between "some" [indefinite] and "of the" [definite] in their use. It's little moments like these, when the grammar makes more sense in an important way, that I feel just that much more capable of understanding the meaning behind the words in a much more productive sense.

I think this may be the homesickness talking, so take what follows with a grain of salt:

There are a number of things about France that I find myself really not liking.

I do not like French methodology, which seems to be everywhere. I've never considered myself much of a proponent of Cartesian philosophy [sorry, Monsieur Descartes...]. I have distinct memories of suffering through Beata's lectures on methodology and forcing myself to memorize the four precepts of The Method [fromDiscourseon the Method, if you're really, really interested...]. I'm caught in a chicken/egg paradigm. Is this methodology fixation because of Descartes [he's been referenced in almost every single one of my classes...]? Or was he just one of the first to put into words what is actually a very, very French tradition?

Okay. That was vague. French-ruled paper has four "lines" per "line". My friend Jess is an assistante, which means she teaches English in a collège [elementary school]. It's through her that I've learned the purpose of so many lines. She explained to me that it's so that students can have a visual aid to learn how to draw their letters. All French hand-writing in, essentially, the same. I don't know why this bothers me so much, but it does. I love my hand-writing, and cannot imagine having been told since a very early age that my writing style must be a certain way.

Also, all written works for class must follow a format that irritates me, and I don't think it's just the typical "you pretend to hate it because you can't do it" attitude. In middle school I was taught how to write a 5-paragraph essay [you tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, you tell 'em, and then you tell 'em what you told 'em!]. I can write a damn-good 5-paragraph essay, man. I mastered, conquered that beast.

And I loved nothing more than that magical moment when Mr. Woods told me that he would not accept that format, ever, under any circunstances.

Being forced back into that tradition, but in an even more exigent way makes is stifiling me.

And, to finish this complain session. I am taking 3 history classes. In each of them, every time the professor goes on and on about how some other country did something epic, such as the Spanish Amarda, they have to toss in an the end that France was doing something equally or even more epic at the exact time. It's always just as an aside.

The actual example that I'm thinking of right now is France's colonial territories during the XVIIth century. Cool, France. You had Canada. You had Louisiana. You had a MASSIVE piece of land [foughly 1/3 of what is now the US] that you sold to the United States. Can't we just get on with the history class? Must we dwell on past French glories?

And then there's overwhelming pride in the professor's voice as he tells us about how France was the first country to track sailors throughout the entirety of their careers, keeping accounts of where and when they went, their pay, etc. [Learning about Les Livrets Ouvriers was also a rather irritating form of control that I learned about last semester...] I just feel like being one of the first countries to keep those records, to be one of the founders of that kind of invasion of privacy isn't really something to be particularly proud of. Alas.

I'm not even going to get into the actual headach that was the bureaucratic process of getting my titre de sejour [visa]. Suffice it to say that "top-down coordination is only necessary when people must be made to do something they would never do of their own accord".

Wow. That was a lot more complaining than I was planning on. Maybe I'll just complain to Emily when she gets here, and delete a lot of that. Meh.

Okay. I can do this.

So, I've been the keeper of various livejournals over the course of my internet career, but I've finally decided to move my life over to blogspot. If you're horribly interested in the angst of the past seven or so years of my life, I can link you, but otherwise, welcome to my present.

Yesterday was Friday. I woke up early enough for a morning of tea, yoga/stretching, a leisurely breakfast, and made it out to campus 15 minutes before my class actually started. I love this time of year --- the daily gain of a few minutes of daylight in the morning and afternoon. The Poitevin sky isn't as gloomily grey as Oregon's. Makes me a bit homesick, and my body isn't quite sure how to react to blue skies in February. I managed to fit in a run in the 2 hour break between translation and history. Mix that with a night of heavy drinking, and you've got about the perfect combination for a super sore Caroline.

After classes I came home and napped and listened to The XX for a bit. Drank some tea. Made dinner [veggies, rice, the usual...]. Formulated more solid evening plans than just "make it to the Irish party." Emily and Bryan came over around 8.30, I think? They got here earlier than I'd anticipated.

Wow. So. There's the play-by-play of my yesterday, up until that pesky moment of self-consciousness/awareness showed up. And this is why I am a horrible blogger.

Okay. Back to the mundane:

We hung around my room for a bit. I played some neat new music, Delphic and Chew Lips, which were both surprisingly good.

See. Yeah. I'm horrible at this blog business. Last night I went to a party, talked to a lot of people, got drunk, kept talking to people, went up and down the stairs a few times, "fait des bises" waaay too many times. Sat on the stairs and talked to Max for a long time. That was nice. Walked home, passed out, woke up hung over.

Today I've cleaned my room [seriously the most daily task I have in my life], done laundry, showered, ate some vegetables for "brunch", stretched for a good bit of time, and consumed enough tea to make up for how horridly dehydrated my poor body is after so much rum. Now I'm going to go "faire des soldes" with Lucy, then attack some homework.

Okay. That was a good first try, I think.