TRYING TO ARRANGE THINGS FOR CSP
Today I had a more or less unproductive day tryign to arrange things for my CSP (cultural studies project, for those of you who aren't Julia). First of all, I switched families this weekend (mine went skiing in the alps - I'm staying for the week with a camerounian family called the Jangwa's - young mom and dad, three little kids, and the mom's brother, all in a three bedroom apartment) so I woke up in a slightly unfamiliar setting and so, when I set out at noon to carry out my errands (point one; go to capitole and look for that CRIJ thing to ask about classes to take; point two; go to the beaux arts to ask about taking art classes there; point three; if I fail to find a place to take art classes from either of these sources, try visit the two suggested places I got from the Mairie de Toulouse, that 'espace bonnefoy' and 'societe des artistes occitains' or whatever they were). Anyway, since I was in a new setting I first had to explore my neigborhood a bit, which ate time. The jangwa residence is trés different que chez Théodore - as I mentioned, they live in an apartment, which is in a newer but slightly more run down part of town. Julia referred to it as 'little africa' but i didn't really notice an overwhelming number of african-looking people - there were more african oriented beauty salons than usual, however, so that's something.
the major difference between this family and the theodores, for me, is that they don't seem to talk as much - at dinner, the mom mostly talked to the kids (which mostly consisted of, "nou nou, manges! tout seul, comme à l'école.") while the dad entertained the baby (quatre mois! c'est si petit!) and watched the news, and the brother just ate. When the brother finished he and the dad (victor, actaully - i remember his name) switched, and victor asked me some questions about being a vegetarian and where I come from aux états unis, mais c'etait tout.
Also the food was a bit different - fish and vegetables in tomato sauce with hot sauce to add if you're daring (they took it away from me so I didn't get to taste any, but tomorrow I'm going for it) plus an egg salade which i tyhink they made just for me, and a big pile of pasta to eat with the fish/ vegetables. At the théodores we mostly ate things like tartes and quiches or meats with sauces, or potatoes with cheese - things that are slightly more solid, I suppose, not pasta-in-sauce type things. Also, the théodores always have cheese around after meals, but the Jangwas apparently don't eat it that often - the mom brought out a brand new hunk of brie after dinner but I'm sure they just bought it becuase serge told them I liked it; mme jangwa sort of apologized as she set it in front of me, saying she didn't know if it was any good becuase she didn't know cheeses, and I think I was the only one who ate any.
anyway, all of this I suppose makes them seem a little less "frenchy" than the théodores - they did, however, have wine at dinner, which the théodores never do, but as one drank it but me (and nou nou , the second youngest kid,kept saying something about it that i couldn't understand becuase I can never undersand anything he says) I think both that and the cheese were both examples of the Jangwa's offering me the standards of french hospitality, even though they don't usually partake in them themselves.
anyway, returning to this morning, I walked around a bit, then took the bus to escarol and walked to capitole to look for the CRIJ but didn't find it (because, as it turns out, it's actaully right by escarol). I headed then for the beaux-arts (which, miraculously, i managed to find) and checked out the current exhibition, which was an awesome assortment of illustration-type art, or art involving old medical illustration or bandde-dessine type stuff, but all of it very innovative, or at least creative, so it was inspiring.
upstairs there was a little video installation that I absolutely loved, (but maybe for the wrong reasons, I'm not sure its actaully good) - it was just a little unflashily-edited video of everyday-life type snapshots of china edited to nondiogetic sound that sounded like it had been recorded with the camera microphone in the streets outside some sort of rock show; it was really low fi and noisy, and the music sounded like it was underwater ... anyway, the ingenous part was the artist hung a disco ball in front of the screen so the mirrors threw little colored lights all over the room that changed as the projection changed ... the effect was simple but pretty and satisfying. the disco trick reminded me of videotaping soapbubbles, which made me nostalgic for hopkins and MICA, and the video reminded me of steph's, which made me nostalgic for india.
After that, I ate bread, cheese, and apples on the beach and watched a group of student age kids who I was pretty sure were tripping on mushrooms wander back and fourth between a playground and a park bench, making weird exclamations and walking creatively, then went to look for that jazz caveau our tourguide yesterday told us about, but didn't find it. I then wandered back to capitole where some sort of african cultural even was going on - that is, a group on non-caucasian drummers and dancers in matching t-shirts and the occasional neon colored wig or giant chinese dragon head mask (or pair of stilts - there were elaborately costumed stilt walkers as well) beating out a really great non-marching-band rythm (that is, nothing that could be mistaken for john phillip sousa) followed by a primarily non caucasian crowd of dancers. the mood was very light and everyone looked like they were having fun. They had attracted a crowd , a lot of whom were white, and everyone in the crowd looked amused and som sort of bounced and half danced, but no one looked disgruntled.
this was interesting becuase it's a little to the contrary of the image of france as a place where immigrants are expected to conform to the pre existing social order (as opposed to altering that preexisting social order so both they and it change to accomodate eachother , whihc would be the melting pot, or maintaining a distinct subculture withing the preexisting social order, which would be the salad - the two systems one likes to think america values) that Berenstien described in 'fragile glory.' These people were veery loudly, poudly, joyfully (and maybe in some peoples' eyes, aggressively) ebracing and celebrating a foreign heritage, and no one seemed to be complaining, or even poking fun - everyone just seemed to be enjoying the spectacle.
Later, another (bizzare) event further demostrated france's embrace of multiculturalism in further defiance of berenstien's assertion - waiting for the bus at escarol I got to watch a group of three (supposedly) native american street musicians dressed very elaborately in dramatic (american)indian garb (hoge feathered headresses, the works) playing wooden flutes and shaking rattles and singing (alon with a boom box) in a language that definatey wasn't french. they'd attracted a crowd as well, whihc seemed to be digging the performance - they were selling cds, and one man was buying one.
I did not know what to make of this - an american subculture I seldom see even in the US making a loud appearance on a streetcorner in southern france, to the apparrent non-surpries of the local frenchmen was really disorienting.
later, when I was on my way home I spotted some place called 'RVLTN' (or something like that) gallery/salon de thé one a sidestreet and went in to check it out. that was alsio a really bizarre experience - downstairs, they had various art and film periodicals on sale, and also books on people like john waters and andy worhol and poetry by patty smith (transalted into french, of course) and videos and dvds for sale, none of whihc i had heard of before. the gallery seemed to contain nothing but red and white pastel drawings of various eighties punk and metal rockstars, and the salon the thé upstairs was all white and equipped with triangular white tables and armless white chairs. two women were conversing quietly while two small children played loudly with a pile of toys on one corner ... incidentally, I feel that there's a slightly differnt attitude towards becoming a parent here than there is in the states. I keep seeing punky or hipster-looking 20 something pushing prams, or taking drags off cigrattetes with one hand and towing a well dressed toddler in the other, with the same nonplussed casualness they display walk around with leashless dogs. I feel like peoples' relationship to parenthood here is less, "well, now I'm a parent" than, "well, now I have a kid." That is, you integrate the kid into your life rather than suddenly adopting a new life and an identity that's based around your kid.
I'd be interested to know whether on average people have kids earlier here, what with folks beign less puritanical and all ... I don't know though - at home it seems like people have kids pretty early, my sisters all had kids early twenties/ late teens, as did most of my freinds' parents - my parents were old, though (though dad has older kids) and so were jeanne's, so you can't generalize. But I don't think it would be an age thing anyway, because I feel like my sisters all settled down and became parents when they had kids ... i think its just a different attitude ("schema3 if you want, schemas explain everything) the french just have a differnt schema for what a good parent looks like.
returning to RVLTN gallery, in this case, a young woman had brought her young child out with her as she went to a café in a punky gallery to meet witha freind, and the ended up playing with the child of the proprietess (who had apparently brought that child to work) a 20-something in stylish black with black hair natted in hip half-dreadlocks. I barely ever see something like that in the states, if only for the reason that people don't take young kids to cafés and restaurants in the states (sauf places like applebees and bob evans) and people definately don't take kids to work ... just like people don't take their dogs to cafés or to work back home, lol.
Anyway, that was interesting and seemed like a place to keep an eye on - seemed like the type of place that might do performance things once in a while; and I should have asked about it, but I'm shy. They coffe there was cheap, but the atmosphere was a little pretentious/ affected, and I don't really like eighties punk/ metal, and everyone there was older than me, but I might start going back there anyway - i need to pick a place at chich to become a regular.
(later)
spaking (much earlier) of eating differnet types of food in different houses, tonight for dinner we had red beans and lots of fried things called (something that sounds like) baignées (i think), which were like non-sugary donut holes, along with a drink made from manoic. It was so ethnic; i was so excited. I loked it a lot, even the manioc stuff (I've been wanting to try it again ever since I got a huge lump of it at a nigerian restaurant and had no idea what to do with it) it has a weird earthy taste that takes some getting used to, but now I want more.
Other funny things about tonight; judith (the oldest kid, maybe 8/9 years old) went to a birthday party at mcdonalds and came back with alittle baseball cap with the arches on it as a gift, which she put on the baby (eric) cocked sideways and started saying "yo yo yo" and making little hip hop gestures. Also, judiths face had all these lines drawin on it, and when I told her i liked her makeup, she said (i think) "I'm an indian." So there I am, with a camerouninan woman and her two french-born camerouinan-origin children, one of whom is wearring a mcdonalds hat, and the other of whom is painted like a native american, and mimicing a hip hop star. It was such a bizzare moment - all these random international subcultures coming together in the context of a french dinner (with baignées and manioc drink). Also, when flipping through my photos later, nou nou (marcel, the middle kid) recognized Josh's teletubby.
On a mostly unrelated note, I forgot to mention that I had a mini conversation with my mère d'accuiel's younger brother the toher day - I asked if he lived there or if he was just visiting, and he said for now he lives there but once he finds work he'll go live alone, and I said something like "quelqu'un m'a dit que il y a beaucoup de chomage ici" and he saud yes, there are two options - if you're french and have papers you can get a good steady job, but if you're not french and don't have papers you can just do little one time jobs that don't last long and don't pay much. I got the impression that he fell into the letter catagory but he didn't explicitly say so.
Incidentally, the kids here are the cutest kids ever - the two that can walk (though one only half-walks - he was born with one fo his feet sort of twisted and he's got a cast on his leg right now that's supposd to be straightnening it out) came and hung out with me in my room after dinner, and the older one brought a book of bande dessinés and drew her own versions of them for me, while the other one rolled up this film revue thing I had on my bed and, pretending it was a gun (not that I approve of that detail, but the rest was cute) pointed it at the ceiling light and made "pow, pow!" sounds like he was shooting it, and saying "je tue le soleil!" then squealing and covering his head as though the sun had fallen on him and he were being burned, saying "ah! il fait chaud!" He did this several times, and for some it was the most charming thing.
at one point, judith went to her room, came back with aspool of string and scissors, cut a length of string, spit a blue plastic bead out of her mouth, strung it on the string, and tied it around my neck. That made me inexpressably happy. I'm sure this had nothing to do with anything, but i think i heard its a tradition in turkey or somewhere to tie blue beads on one's kids to keep off the evil eye.
also, later, when I was confused about the french word for the color brown, judith said something like 'its like the orange' and when i was confused marcel hobbled off and came back witha lunchpail full of 'marrons,'(marron is the french word for brown, apparently) whihc are chestnuts I beleive, and gave me one. Not to be outdone, judith left and came back with a pail ful of marbles, and gave me a dark one covered in yellow speckles, after demonstrating how it shows blue under the light.
the major difference between this family and the theodores, for me, is that they don't seem to talk as much - at dinner, the mom mostly talked to the kids (which mostly consisted of, "nou nou, manges! tout seul, comme à l'école.") while the dad entertained the baby (quatre mois! c'est si petit!) and watched the news, and the brother just ate. When the brother finished he and the dad (victor, actaully - i remember his name) switched, and victor asked me some questions about being a vegetarian and where I come from aux états unis, mais c'etait tout.
Also the food was a bit different - fish and vegetables in tomato sauce with hot sauce to add if you're daring (they took it away from me so I didn't get to taste any, but tomorrow I'm going for it) plus an egg salade which i tyhink they made just for me, and a big pile of pasta to eat with the fish/ vegetables. At the théodores we mostly ate things like tartes and quiches or meats with sauces, or potatoes with cheese - things that are slightly more solid, I suppose, not pasta-in-sauce type things. Also, the théodores always have cheese around after meals, but the Jangwas apparently don't eat it that often - the mom brought out a brand new hunk of brie after dinner but I'm sure they just bought it becuase serge told them I liked it; mme jangwa sort of apologized as she set it in front of me, saying she didn't know if it was any good becuase she didn't know cheeses, and I think I was the only one who ate any.
anyway, all of this I suppose makes them seem a little less "frenchy" than the théodores - they did, however, have wine at dinner, which the théodores never do, but as one drank it but me (and nou nou , the second youngest kid,kept saying something about it that i couldn't understand becuase I can never undersand anything he says) I think both that and the cheese were both examples of the Jangwa's offering me the standards of french hospitality, even though they don't usually partake in them themselves.
anyway, returning to this morning, I walked around a bit, then took the bus to escarol and walked to capitole to look for the CRIJ but didn't find it (because, as it turns out, it's actaully right by escarol). I headed then for the beaux-arts (which, miraculously, i managed to find) and checked out the current exhibition, which was an awesome assortment of illustration-type art, or art involving old medical illustration or bandde-dessine type stuff, but all of it very innovative, or at least creative, so it was inspiring.
upstairs there was a little video installation that I absolutely loved, (but maybe for the wrong reasons, I'm not sure its actaully good) - it was just a little unflashily-edited video of everyday-life type snapshots of china edited to nondiogetic sound that sounded like it had been recorded with the camera microphone in the streets outside some sort of rock show; it was really low fi and noisy, and the music sounded like it was underwater ... anyway, the ingenous part was the artist hung a disco ball in front of the screen so the mirrors threw little colored lights all over the room that changed as the projection changed ... the effect was simple but pretty and satisfying. the disco trick reminded me of videotaping soapbubbles, which made me nostalgic for hopkins and MICA, and the video reminded me of steph's, which made me nostalgic for india.
After that, I ate bread, cheese, and apples on the beach and watched a group of student age kids who I was pretty sure were tripping on mushrooms wander back and fourth between a playground and a park bench, making weird exclamations and walking creatively, then went to look for that jazz caveau our tourguide yesterday told us about, but didn't find it. I then wandered back to capitole where some sort of african cultural even was going on - that is, a group on non-caucasian drummers and dancers in matching t-shirts and the occasional neon colored wig or giant chinese dragon head mask (or pair of stilts - there were elaborately costumed stilt walkers as well) beating out a really great non-marching-band rythm (that is, nothing that could be mistaken for john phillip sousa) followed by a primarily non caucasian crowd of dancers. the mood was very light and everyone looked like they were having fun. They had attracted a crowd , a lot of whom were white, and everyone in the crowd looked amused and som sort of bounced and half danced, but no one looked disgruntled.
this was interesting becuase it's a little to the contrary of the image of france as a place where immigrants are expected to conform to the pre existing social order (as opposed to altering that preexisting social order so both they and it change to accomodate eachother , whihc would be the melting pot, or maintaining a distinct subculture withing the preexisting social order, which would be the salad - the two systems one likes to think america values) that Berenstien described in 'fragile glory.' These people were veery loudly, poudly, joyfully (and maybe in some peoples' eyes, aggressively) ebracing and celebrating a foreign heritage, and no one seemed to be complaining, or even poking fun - everyone just seemed to be enjoying the spectacle.
Later, another (bizzare) event further demostrated france's embrace of multiculturalism in further defiance of berenstien's assertion - waiting for the bus at escarol I got to watch a group of three (supposedly) native american street musicians dressed very elaborately in dramatic (american)indian garb (hoge feathered headresses, the works) playing wooden flutes and shaking rattles and singing (alon with a boom box) in a language that definatey wasn't french. they'd attracted a crowd as well, whihc seemed to be digging the performance - they were selling cds, and one man was buying one.
I did not know what to make of this - an american subculture I seldom see even in the US making a loud appearance on a streetcorner in southern france, to the apparrent non-surpries of the local frenchmen was really disorienting.
later, when I was on my way home I spotted some place called 'RVLTN' (or something like that) gallery/salon de thé one a sidestreet and went in to check it out. that was alsio a really bizarre experience - downstairs, they had various art and film periodicals on sale, and also books on people like john waters and andy worhol and poetry by patty smith (transalted into french, of course) and videos and dvds for sale, none of whihc i had heard of before. the gallery seemed to contain nothing but red and white pastel drawings of various eighties punk and metal rockstars, and the salon the thé upstairs was all white and equipped with triangular white tables and armless white chairs. two women were conversing quietly while two small children played loudly with a pile of toys on one corner ... incidentally, I feel that there's a slightly differnt attitude towards becoming a parent here than there is in the states. I keep seeing punky or hipster-looking 20 something pushing prams, or taking drags off cigrattetes with one hand and towing a well dressed toddler in the other, with the same nonplussed casualness they display walk around with leashless dogs. I feel like peoples' relationship to parenthood here is less, "well, now I'm a parent" than, "well, now I have a kid." That is, you integrate the kid into your life rather than suddenly adopting a new life and an identity that's based around your kid.
I'd be interested to know whether on average people have kids earlier here, what with folks beign less puritanical and all ... I don't know though - at home it seems like people have kids pretty early, my sisters all had kids early twenties/ late teens, as did most of my freinds' parents - my parents were old, though (though dad has older kids) and so were jeanne's, so you can't generalize. But I don't think it would be an age thing anyway, because I feel like my sisters all settled down and became parents when they had kids ... i think its just a different attitude ("schema3 if you want, schemas explain everything) the french just have a differnt schema for what a good parent looks like.
returning to RVLTN gallery, in this case, a young woman had brought her young child out with her as she went to a café in a punky gallery to meet witha freind, and the ended up playing with the child of the proprietess (who had apparently brought that child to work) a 20-something in stylish black with black hair natted in hip half-dreadlocks. I barely ever see something like that in the states, if only for the reason that people don't take young kids to cafés and restaurants in the states (sauf places like applebees and bob evans) and people definately don't take kids to work ... just like people don't take their dogs to cafés or to work back home, lol.
Anyway, that was interesting and seemed like a place to keep an eye on - seemed like the type of place that might do performance things once in a while; and I should have asked about it, but I'm shy. They coffe there was cheap, but the atmosphere was a little pretentious/ affected, and I don't really like eighties punk/ metal, and everyone there was older than me, but I might start going back there anyway - i need to pick a place at chich to become a regular.
(later)
spaking (much earlier) of eating differnet types of food in different houses, tonight for dinner we had red beans and lots of fried things called (something that sounds like) baignées (i think), which were like non-sugary donut holes, along with a drink made from manoic. It was so ethnic; i was so excited. I loked it a lot, even the manioc stuff (I've been wanting to try it again ever since I got a huge lump of it at a nigerian restaurant and had no idea what to do with it) it has a weird earthy taste that takes some getting used to, but now I want more.
Other funny things about tonight; judith (the oldest kid, maybe 8/9 years old) went to a birthday party at mcdonalds and came back with alittle baseball cap with the arches on it as a gift, which she put on the baby (eric) cocked sideways and started saying "yo yo yo" and making little hip hop gestures. Also, judiths face had all these lines drawin on it, and when I told her i liked her makeup, she said (i think) "I'm an indian." So there I am, with a camerouninan woman and her two french-born camerouinan-origin children, one of whom is wearring a mcdonalds hat, and the other of whom is painted like a native american, and mimicing a hip hop star. It was such a bizzare moment - all these random international subcultures coming together in the context of a french dinner (with baignées and manioc drink). Also, when flipping through my photos later, nou nou (marcel, the middle kid) recognized Josh's teletubby.
On a mostly unrelated note, I forgot to mention that I had a mini conversation with my mère d'accuiel's younger brother the toher day - I asked if he lived there or if he was just visiting, and he said for now he lives there but once he finds work he'll go live alone, and I said something like "quelqu'un m'a dit que il y a beaucoup de chomage ici" and he saud yes, there are two options - if you're french and have papers you can get a good steady job, but if you're not french and don't have papers you can just do little one time jobs that don't last long and don't pay much. I got the impression that he fell into the letter catagory but he didn't explicitly say so.
Incidentally, the kids here are the cutest kids ever - the two that can walk (though one only half-walks - he was born with one fo his feet sort of twisted and he's got a cast on his leg right now that's supposd to be straightnening it out) came and hung out with me in my room after dinner, and the older one brought a book of bande dessinés and drew her own versions of them for me, while the other one rolled up this film revue thing I had on my bed and, pretending it was a gun (not that I approve of that detail, but the rest was cute) pointed it at the ceiling light and made "pow, pow!" sounds like he was shooting it, and saying "je tue le soleil!" then squealing and covering his head as though the sun had fallen on him and he were being burned, saying "ah! il fait chaud!" He did this several times, and for some it was the most charming thing.
at one point, judith went to her room, came back with aspool of string and scissors, cut a length of string, spit a blue plastic bead out of her mouth, strung it on the string, and tied it around my neck. That made me inexpressably happy. I'm sure this had nothing to do with anything, but i think i heard its a tradition in turkey or somewhere to tie blue beads on one's kids to keep off the evil eye.
also, later, when I was confused about the french word for the color brown, judith said something like 'its like the orange' and when i was confused marcel hobbled off and came back witha lunchpail full of 'marrons,'(marron is the french word for brown, apparently) whihc are chestnuts I beleive, and gave me one. Not to be outdone, judith left and came back with a pail ful of marbles, and gave me a dark one covered in yellow speckles, after demonstrating how it shows blue under the light.