My ILP professor was talking to us about vacations the other day. The three weeks we have off within this semester correspond with the holidays of the rest of the Parisian academic system (it is not just our program choosing to give us breaks at certain times). We also have several individual days off scattered throughout. We have to make up class time at alternative times for those days, but who could complain? Our professor told us that in France, all full-time workers receive a minimum of five weeks vacation, and many receive more. Much more than Americans receive on average, she said. I told her how my mother gets two weeks worth of vacation days and she takes them individually rather than all at once. She practically choked. How can you visit your family? she asked. Go on trips? "I don't understand that about you Americans, why you always want to work, work, work."
Classes are going really well so far, even though it has only been one week. The work is substantial but not overbearing and all of the classes seem very enjoyable. My architecture/ art history class is like a weekly tour of Paris, as we go to a new historic/important site every week; today, as an introduction, we went to the old Roman bath houses and arena (most people know Paris is old, but Paris is really, really old. It was in fact a city built by the Romans just a few years back). In my education class, in March we get to go into local French schools and teach English to elementary-aged school children. Tonight, I also signed up to volunteer to work with 3-5 year olds, to help familiarize them with English as well (preschool is mandatory in France). I am really looking forward to that, and will hopefully figure that schedule out soon.
Speaking of schedules, this French schedule has taken a lot of getting used to, but I like it. I have always been more of a night owl - definitely not a morning person - anyway, so as weird as it has been not having dinner until close to 22h00 when I eat with my host family, I do like it. The day somehow feels more relaxed. When I cook for myself the rest of the week, I eat earlier, around 19h00 or 20h00. Last week sometime, it was about 21h45 when I was getting out of the shower and heading back to my room to get ready for bed when my host mother came in and said I was free to use the kitchen to cook, as she was done using the stove. Oops. I smiled and thanked her and then went to sleep as the family began dinner.
Parisian adventures continue. I went with Devan to the Catacombs the other day. It is this underground network of old mines and quarries that were used a couple hundred years ago to consolidate all of the dead bodies in Paris. All of the cemeteries became full and the city was overwhelmed; so, bodies were exhumed and placed in the old quarries. I do not know what I was expecting but it was not what we saw. You enter the Catacombs in this old house on a plot of land near the metro, in the middle of a rotary. You descend 20 meters into the ground - one hell of a spiral staircase - and then walk through dimly lit stone and mud corridors meandering through the earth. We walked for about a mile (I Googled it) and it was definitely creepy but pretty boring. We were thankful we did not actually have to pay for it since we are students.
But then, suddenly, you come to a door next to a sign warning you not to touch anything, and you accidentally catch a glimpse of the piles of bones that lie ahead of you in the next room, and it takes a second to register for you. You realize they are bones, actual human bones, and when you walk through the arch sitting upon femurs are skulls whose empty sockets are fixated on you. And you walk and walk and walk and there are more bones and more bones and more bones. The bones of six million different people, though they all look the same: triple the amount of people currently living in France, if I am not mistaken. It was incredibly interesting and so unassuming - who would have known they were there? - but we were not sad to leave.
Another gruesome part of French history was the medieval period followed by the French revolution. Prior to the Revolution, people who were sentenced to death were publicly tortured; I will not go into detail, but anyone who has read Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" knows precisely what I am talking about. Today in history, we were talking about the French Revolution and how the guillotine - the giant beheading blade - became the preferred and humane method of execution during the period known as the Terror (think the French version of the Salem witch trials, with the "witches" being anyone who was suspected of being "anti-revolutionary"). Anyway, this is not intended as a history lesson but instead to introduce you to my theory that despite the end of the Revolution and the Empires, etc., etc. the French actually never fully discarded the idea of the guillotine and instead used it as inspiration when they designed the doors of the modern metro.
Seriously. Those suckers do not let go. I watched as a woman's wheeled suitcase get trapped the other day. You would think the doors would have sensors or something, for safety. They do not loosen their grip, but instead continue to try to push shut. Another man tried to fight the door as she fought to free her bag; finally, it flew out of the door and the man almost lost his finger. Straight out of a movie scene, another kid about my age came diving through the doors as they closed the other day, and I thought he was going to end up like King Henry XIV.
Going to climb the Eiffel Tower tomorrow - wish us a lot of luck, we are taking the stairs until the second level.
A bientot!
