I am horrible at keeping up with this thing.

One of the major setbacks of not updating this blog very often, is that it then becomes very difficult for me to create any sense of continuity. Oh, the challenge of composition.

So. Where were we?

The exam for les français et la mer is not until sometime in May. Max was mistaken, and practically gave me a heart attack. Also, my philosophy paper got moved to sometime in May, which means I only have two exams this week. Downside to the paper being moved is that the professor wants 6 to 8 pages, single-spaced, and French paper is longer than American paper. Alas.

I have decided against Going Nowhere, instead I am going to Denmark to visit family. My mom's been cheering for me to go there for about five months now. Despite my Danish heritage, I've never really had it on my list of places I dream of visiting. I know that my mom was there when she was about my age, and had the time of her life. A part of me feels like she wants me to relive her experiences, or relive them vicariously through me. But, if she did have a fantastic time, what do I have to lose? I'm sort of excited to get to know this side of my family. I met Uncle Torban a few years ago when he was visiting Oregon, and he's a lot like my grandpa Carl, whom I adore. En plus, Keelie, one of my cousins, visited them a couple of years ago, and from what I've heard, she really liked Denmark.

The weather has become all... spring like. It's cold and windy and rainy one moment, and the next it's warm and sunny and lovely; the flowers freshly watered and everything is blooming and shining in that fantastic way that it does this time of year. The time change [Europe observes daylight savings time at a different time than North America] has really thrown me off. It stays light so late, yet it's somehow still pretty light even when I wake up at 7am. Last night I forgot to turn the heater off before falling asleep, and woke up sweating around 5am. My sleeping self decided to turn off the heater and open the window. I think some baby birds have already made it out of their eggs! Such singing and squawking and whatnot, all through the night! There's nothing that remotely resembles a screen on my window, so I don't know what sort of little creatures have access to my room. At any rate, the sensation of waking up to such fresh air is. Well, it's refreshing.

I've been drinking a lot of maté lately, which, I think, has been affecting my dream-cycle. Such vivid, elaborate dreams. I don't really record them, which may or may not be smart? They don't correspond much to reality, but they're definitely my subconscious self working a lot of stuff out. From what I've read, if people share the same maté leaves from the same bombilla [drinking communally], they will have shared dreams. Hrmmm...

Time is so distended. I have this week of classes, then two weeks of break [one week with my folks!!!, then a week in Norway visiting Daniel!], then one week of history classes and two weeks of CLFE classes, two weeks of exams, then I'll be technically "free" from Poitiers on 15 May. Back in February my train was more than 2 hours delayed, so SNCF reimbursed me 66% of my ticket. I mailed in the form, not really hoping for anything. But yesterday I got a letter with 31.60 Euros worth of rail vouchers. It was nice to get that, even though I don't have any immediate plans to use it. Today makes seven months in Europe, which is absolutely absurd in its own way. I can hardly wrap my mind around it. Last night I went for a very, very long walk through neighborhoods I've never seen before. It happens all the time. How have I lived here for so long, yet explored so little? Or. I feel like I know so much of this city, but every time I leave my house I seem to discover a new corner of it.

The next time I update I will probably know when I am heading home. Weird to find myself at this point already. Stefanie Holloway has promised she'll make it out to Eugene when I get home. Also, my sister is looking into visiting Seattle/Portland/Salem with her boyfriend, whom I have yet to meet!, around the end of July. Wow. How is it already so near summer again?? When do I register for fall classes? How am I going to finish all of my undergrad studies in just one year? There are so many things I want to learn, so many classes I want to take! And I don't even know where I'll be living in the fall. Perhaps a sofa, until I can find somewhere real. Hmmm...

eating avocados again

Since we last spoke!

- studying for les français et la mer, as well as a good amount of reading for philosophy. I may have figured out my exams schedule, and if so, I am not looking forward to it

- I've been in contact with folks about Going Nowhere, and think I am going to end up there for a few weeks this summer, which means not going home until the end of July.

- agonizing over when to go home: follow my heart, follow my head

- consuming a nice [7 euro] bottle of red wine over the course of 3 days. a.k.a. giving the wine the time it deserves to be appreciated

- hours spent at Parc Blossac with friends and sunshine

- finally got around to putting photos on my walls, mostly thanks to some photos from Lauren that really do warrant wall space

- half a dozen organic eggs at the market is only 10¢ more than half a "conventional" dozen eggs at the gorcery store

- got grades back for CFLE midterms. 12,5 in history, 13,5 in linguistic. French grading system is so. French. Bizarre to content myself with the "numeric equivalent" of 60-65%, even if it is a really, really good mark

I have a stack of stamped envelopes waiting for me to fill them with letters and seld them off. It may not happen until after exams next week, but I will get letters to these folks.

Eating Like a Normal Person.

In light of the knowledge that France doesn't mistreat their animals the way the American meat industry does, I have decided to try to "eat like a normal person." Further, I've been feeling really weak and out of it lately, and I think it has something to do with my protein intake. Buying eggs directly from the farmer does alleviate the majority of the adverse feelings I've indoctrinated myself into feeling over the past few years.

This does, in some ways, makes me feel like I am giving up. For the first few months after I moved out of my host parents house I refrained from eating bread and cheese, even avoided most alcohol until fairly recently. But once Ja, after becoming really sick from eating too much gluten, said something I may never forget. "We do this to ourselves." He then went on to talk about how before he became vegan he could eat almost anything he wanted, but now can hardly stomach fries that've been cooked in the same oil that's cooked meat.

Lately I've been enjoying going to markets and buying small bits of nice cheeses, then sitting in the springtime sunshine to enjoy them. I even had a glass of Haute-Poitou Chardonnay with dinner the other night, something I've never really done before. I think it's my relationship with alcohol that I am most willing to develop, moreso than my relationship with food. Last weekend and the weekend before, with Jess and Andrea, we just drank a glass, or a bottle between the three of us, with our meals. Alcohol has always been such a "contraband!" Now that I am old enough to drink in every country where it is legal, I still feel that irritating obligation to feel "ashamed", and the odd relationship with myself for not feeling guilty. Blah.

Anyways. On to the cool thing I found out about the French university system.

As I have explained numerous times, to numerous people, the French university system is very different than the American one. Here, if you are a biology major, you ONLY take biology classes, and they are all with every other biology major in your year. The university gives you your "emploi du temps", and you follow it. You have a few choices in "elective" type classes, but for the most part, it's set for you.

This was, of course, quite a stark contrast when comparing it with the American system. In the states, each department offers a certain number of courses, at the 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 level. You're faced with a certain number of requirements, both general education and major/minor specific, which you have to fulfill. There's a lot of freedom in our system. Don't feel like taking that 8am class? No problem, wait until next semester, something else will be offered at a different time! Not interested in biology? No problem, you can take psychology classes to fulfill science requirements! Additionally, it's incredibly rare that two people graduating will have taken exactly the same courses, even if they're in the same major.

So. Here's what I found out this past week. While the university student government here has almost no power, in comparison to the American system, their students do elect candidates to a very, very important council of a different type. [Granted, at the UO, the ASUO is mostly in charge of spending "student dollars", while French students don't have to pay any sort of "incidental fee".]

These councils are "le conseil d'administration", "le conseil des études" and "le conseil de la université". The latter two essentially function on the premise that the students elected to the council work with the professors in a given department. The elected student officials operate as liaison between the students and their professors. If the students want more hours of German, fewer hours of English, philosophy students have a particular interest in Bergson and really don't want to take another class on Descartes, they express this to the members of the "conseil des études" and "conseil de la université." The council members then pass this on to professors, who work to meet these requests.

The super cool part comes in with "le conseil d'administration." Once the professors have proposed their classes to the admin, the students on this council work with the admin to choose which classes will actually be offered. The students actually have the power to override decisions made by the admin [within reason, I'd suppose].

So, chew on that difference.

[Granted, at least in the philosophy department at the UO, if a student can gather enough other students for a reading group and find a faculty sponsor, they can creat a "class" and get credit for it.]

Alright. Time for a shower and some sleep.

Rochefort

Oh dear. How am I going to keep things around here "updated" if I don't keep up with what I do, when I do it, etc.

Last weekend was really nice. I went to the Sunday market with some friends and we had a nice picnic. It's been wicked cold here, the type of cold that hurts your hands and makes you want another sweater, even when you're already wearing three. Lucy's mom was here last week, and it was really a treat to get to meet her. I'm exicted to visit them in Philomath this summer. I love meeting peoples parents and learning about their relationships. we went to Jasmin Citronnelle for tea and scones on Wednesday, and then I spent a few hours with Lucy and her mum on Thursday evening.

Thursday I went with Jess to a Kabaret at Numéro 23. It was really silly, from what I could understand of it. The singing, dancing, and music was inpressive. Three bassons and an electric keyboard. Three singers, but the musicians all sang along at parts. It made me remember that I need to find somewhere to use my tap shoes. I miss dancing in almost every sense of the word.

This weekend I trekked out to Rochefort with Jess for her friend Andrea's birthday. It was a rather epicurean weekend, consisting of a lot of cooking, champagne, and conversation. The train to Rochefort is still out because of the storms we had a few weeks ago, and the wait for the next bus from Surgères, where the train took us, to Rochefort was a two hour wait, so we ended up hitching and got there in under half an hour. We went to the market, where all of the food was remarkably less expensive than in the gorcery stores. [Also, we bought chicken that still had some feathers on it...] I wish I knew more about French farm subsidizing. I have started looking into WWOOFing farms, and think it may be good to look into finding a farm soon, if that's what I am going to do this summer.

Tonight I washed my hair with dishsoap. It worked really well, my hair feels cleaner than it has in ages. Almost two years, and I still don't have a real washing strategy worked out. Lucy was lovely enough to spend a couple of hours helping me maintain my hair, but there's still loads of work to be done. I keep going back and forth between loving and hating it, but it's just so long and has been so long, and I'm just not quite ready for change.

I am feeling really unsatisfied with a couple of my classes. We had some exams last week. On the linguistic exam we had the question:

Expliquez pourquoi on dit:

1. Vous avez fait des progrès.

2. Vous avez fait de gros progrès.

Explain why one says:

1. You have made some progresses [des = plural, "progrès" itself has the same spelling in the singular and plural]

2. You have made a lot of progress[es] [in this context it's very ambiguous as to whether "progrès" is singular or plural, because of the "de gros"]

So, the difference between the two has something to do with this really inane rule "le règle de 't'as de beaux yeux", which seems to be more or less made up by my professor. It has to do with it not being absolutely necessary to use "des" [plural, meaning "of the" or "some", depending on the context and whether it's acting as a definite or indefinite article]. I asked a number of French students that I know here, and none of them knew about this rule, or could explain the difference. Or, the difference that they explained was SO nuanced that i wanted to kick someone. Further, apparently it would be quite bizarre for a French person to say "gros" in this context.

Beyond that, we have had 6 weeks of class, and the professor of my Sartre/Merleau-Ponty class has LITERALLY not said a single word about either of their philosophical systems. He has, however, wasted 5 classes [10 hours!] talking about Freudian theories of jealousy and causes of male homosexuality. And one class trying to explain how Lacan has turned Freuds "principles" into something of a Hegelian dialectic movement [which can still lead to homosexuality?], which I really disagree with. Unfortunately, this professor doesn't seem to want to be engaged by the students, especially not the foreign one who can hardly articulate herself.

On another note, I learned something very, very interesting about the French education system, which I don't have the energy to write about now, but am going to allude to now, so that tomorrow or the next day or at some time in the future I'll remember to write about it. I keep having these recurring nightmares about going home early and not being able to take exams over here, or about not being able to get home for one reason or another and missing a lot of Oregon summer. Jess suggested some responses for me to give my dream self, so hopefully next time I'll be able to get out of the loop.

a possibe solution??

"It is not only envy, it is also admiration, yes, sincere admiration: in the way that man puts all of his energy into writing there is certainly a generosity, a faith in communication, in giving others what others expect of him, without creating introverted problems for himself."

-Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler

I'd like to think that that's the solution to my blogging issues. It inspires curiosity: would life be "easier" if I weren't so interested in philosophy? I've been in loose dialogue with an old friend who's always accused me of creating this type of problems for myself. I guess I just don't know what I'm supposed to be writing about [like there's some sort of formula?], or what people "expect" to read about, and I feel the need to respond to those questions before setting out.

Anyways. Tuesday I had lunch with Boots, then got some groceries and walked home from the fac, a 45 minute walk. It'd been a long while since I'd done that walk, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Last night I went for about a 45 minute walk, and it made me miss going for hikes up the butte to watch the sunset with friends in Eugene. I feel really disconnected from the things that I was learning to love this time last year. I'm not quite sure how I am supposed to respond to this realization. I find myself longing for a lot of things that I know I just can't have right now. In any case, I started sprouting some garlic on Sunday, and planted two cloves of it today. One of the cloves is on a mission, and I wish I had compost to offer it as a thank-you for growing so earnestly.

It's pretty lovely and sunny here. I woke up this morning to sunshine. Then I was lucky enough to get to talk to Cat and Mariah for a while on the internet before going to class. Seale had posted a link to the new Minus the Bear song. I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the new sound they're going for. When "Into the Mirror" came out it took me a while to get used just how. plain. sexy. their new stuff is. "My Time" is the new song, and I really, really look forward to them coming out with a new album and going on tour in the fall and continuing to be an epic band, despite their changing sound.

After class I came home and drank some tea and painted, listened to a lot of good music. Then I decided to go out and see what was happening in the world of Easy Cash Pawnshop at Le Grand Large. Now I am the proud owner of a silver Decathlon road bike. I wish I could raise the handle bars a bit, but they'll be fine the way they are for now. The pedals are made for clip-in bike shoes, which may be better in the long run, because "regular" pedals tend to tear up the soul of my birkenstocks somethin' awful.

I reread Anthem on Monday. I really don't know why. I can't even figure out why I brough the book here. The whole text is undoubtably available for free online. It's really not worth the 2-hour read, it takes up way too much space for how short of a story it is. And. Well. It just. Sucks. It's a negative definition of capitalism/"objecitvism" [Ayn Rand's philosophy], opposing it to a type of dystopic collectivism in which anything done for the individual is considered evil or immoral. In the end the reader is left thinking that this individualism is what's going to lead us to knowledge and freedom. It's a good enough idea, but the novella is so short that you can hardly justify disregarding a single idea, and some of the things packed in there are really disagreeable [bending nature to your will, for one]. So here I am, picking at bits and pieces of two different larger trains of thought. There are parts of both which I wholly agree with. I need to get home, to real philosophy classes and real inerlocutors with whom I can engage myelf and discuss these types of ideas.

Speaking of home, I am thinking more and more of getting home in time for the Country Fair. I suggested the date 7 July to my mom, but apparently the whole family is going to be in NH then, including Stef [aaaaaaaah, why did she have to pull the sister card?? I wouldn't care so much if it were just m and d and the monsters, but her!], which has me torn. I just want to go home. I don't want any other layovers. I want Oregon, right away when I get back to the states. I'm still not positive what I'm going to do with my summer. The girls are all going to make it out to Eugene for a week, and I must, must, must be home for that. I think that having a bike here is going to make being here a lot easier on my heart, though.