PARIS METRO DROPOFF
during the paris metro dropoff we were supposed to practice our language skills by completing a sort of scavenger hunt - I received 5 words and had to figures out the definitions of them somehow, then report back to class and tell everyone what I'd found.
My first word was eglise, which turned out to be simple becuase withing moments of stepping off the metro I discovered signs pointing to the wat to it, and hunted it down without much trouble. it turned out to be a large, beautiful, 11th - 12th century cathedral. mass was being held when i walked in so I sat down to sort of listen and look - some littl details: out of the roughly 29 people present, only four were men; the preist was male, but some young more or less casually dressed woman got up to read some sort of announcement while I was walking in. Everyone was white skinned and most were white haired, conservatively dressed, middle aged to elderly. The parts of the sermon I could understand had to do with miracles - one may have concerned a jew accepting jesus (I kept hearing the word 'synagog'); the other seemed to concern a child getting resurrected.They then san and recited something I couldnt understand, then the preist brought out a chalice of wine and half a wafter and did a ceremony to consecrate them. he then ate the wafer and drank the wine, in that order - I noticed her shook all the crumbs of the wafer off his fingers into the wine, presumably so he'd get all of it, and non of it would end up on the floor. He then brought out more wafers ad everyone came up in 2 ques to receive them - everyone who wanted got a wafer ("le petit corps triste" I think he said) but no one got wine.
Most of my language learning here occurred trying to figure out what was being said in the sservice, mostly by zeroing in on words I know ('sang' 'corps' 'jésus') and paying attention to actions (holding up the wafer) and comparing them to what i know from experience is usually said at a church (though I've never actually been to a catholic mass) to figure out if he's actually saying what I think he's saying, and to try to decipher what words he's using to do it. Also, the floor plan pamphlet at the front was in both french and english, so I got to compare the two.
My next word was delacroix. I got to cheat on this becuase I already knew who delacroix was. There were signs around the metro stop pointing to a delacroix museum, so I followed them, passed it three times, then finally noticed a little sign for the musée in front of the entrance to an apartment building. Turns out the museum was built in his former residence. Anyway, it was closed on tuesdays, so I didn't get to check it out.
the language skills that came into play here mostly had to do with me using cognates and context clues to figure out what the posters said, and why I couldn't get the door to open.
The next word was 'Deux Magots' which was even easier than the others because a) it was right across the street from the metro stations (it's a café) and b) I'd already read in 'paris to the moon' and 'a moveable feast' that it used to be a hangout for expatriate writers and artists in I think the 20's and 30's.
My last word (or what I thought was my last word) was beaux-arts, which according to stil more signs was a school ('école des beaux-arts') but though those signs were helpful in defining the word they defiantely weren't helpful in finding the building. I got lost,a sked directions (in french) and didn't understand them, got lost again, asked directions again (again, in french) and ended up by the musée d'orsay, and decided to go there instead, ostentibly to look for some delacroix. I went back later, however, and found the école, and looked at their student show - and talked to some french man who worked there (who couldn't understand why, if I was studying art, I'd be leavign paris for toulouse to study french) for a long time, in french,a nf it was really cool but also really nerve wracking; it was cool talking to him but I nevertheless kept wishing he'd leave so I didn't have to talk anymore. At one point he was trying to explain something to me and switched to english, so I switched to engklish to respond, and he said something like, "you're a different person when you speak english" which I thought was funny and accidentally profound and said something like "c'est la confidance." Because it is - having to communicate in a language you don't have command of is super humbling and makes you behave completely differently.
I actaully had one more word that I forgot to ask about, because I lost track of time at the musée d'orsay - "france-inter", which I found out later is the national radio station. My strategy to find that one out was just, go up to a french persona nd ask "qu'est-ce c'est, france-inter?" which seems to be pretty effective.
My first word was eglise, which turned out to be simple becuase withing moments of stepping off the metro I discovered signs pointing to the wat to it, and hunted it down without much trouble. it turned out to be a large, beautiful, 11th - 12th century cathedral. mass was being held when i walked in so I sat down to sort of listen and look - some littl details: out of the roughly 29 people present, only four were men; the preist was male, but some young more or less casually dressed woman got up to read some sort of announcement while I was walking in. Everyone was white skinned and most were white haired, conservatively dressed, middle aged to elderly. The parts of the sermon I could understand had to do with miracles - one may have concerned a jew accepting jesus (I kept hearing the word 'synagog'); the other seemed to concern a child getting resurrected.They then san and recited something I couldnt understand, then the preist brought out a chalice of wine and half a wafter and did a ceremony to consecrate them. he then ate the wafer and drank the wine, in that order - I noticed her shook all the crumbs of the wafer off his fingers into the wine, presumably so he'd get all of it, and non of it would end up on the floor. He then brought out more wafers ad everyone came up in 2 ques to receive them - everyone who wanted got a wafer ("le petit corps triste" I think he said) but no one got wine.
Most of my language learning here occurred trying to figure out what was being said in the sservice, mostly by zeroing in on words I know ('sang' 'corps' 'jésus') and paying attention to actions (holding up the wafer) and comparing them to what i know from experience is usually said at a church (though I've never actually been to a catholic mass) to figure out if he's actually saying what I think he's saying, and to try to decipher what words he's using to do it. Also, the floor plan pamphlet at the front was in both french and english, so I got to compare the two.
My next word was delacroix. I got to cheat on this becuase I already knew who delacroix was. There were signs around the metro stop pointing to a delacroix museum, so I followed them, passed it three times, then finally noticed a little sign for the musée in front of the entrance to an apartment building. Turns out the museum was built in his former residence. Anyway, it was closed on tuesdays, so I didn't get to check it out.
the language skills that came into play here mostly had to do with me using cognates and context clues to figure out what the posters said, and why I couldn't get the door to open.
The next word was 'Deux Magots' which was even easier than the others because a) it was right across the street from the metro stations (it's a café) and b) I'd already read in 'paris to the moon' and 'a moveable feast' that it used to be a hangout for expatriate writers and artists in I think the 20's and 30's.
My last word (or what I thought was my last word) was beaux-arts, which according to stil more signs was a school ('école des beaux-arts') but though those signs were helpful in defining the word they defiantely weren't helpful in finding the building. I got lost,a sked directions (in french) and didn't understand them, got lost again, asked directions again (again, in french) and ended up by the musée d'orsay, and decided to go there instead, ostentibly to look for some delacroix. I went back later, however, and found the école, and looked at their student show - and talked to some french man who worked there (who couldn't understand why, if I was studying art, I'd be leavign paris for toulouse to study french) for a long time, in french,a nf it was really cool but also really nerve wracking; it was cool talking to him but I nevertheless kept wishing he'd leave so I didn't have to talk anymore. At one point he was trying to explain something to me and switched to english, so I switched to engklish to respond, and he said something like, "you're a different person when you speak english" which I thought was funny and accidentally profound and said something like "c'est la confidance." Because it is - having to communicate in a language you don't have command of is super humbling and makes you behave completely differently.
I actaully had one more word that I forgot to ask about, because I lost track of time at the musée d'orsay - "france-inter", which I found out later is the national radio station. My strategy to find that one out was just, go up to a french persona nd ask "qu'est-ce c'est, france-inter?" which seems to be pretty effective.