Cultural Experiences
Camille has been with us for two weeks, and so far I would count the experiment a success. Of course, she's in classes every morning, and bring run around to tourist sites every afternoon, so we aren't seeing much of her during the week! But it's funny, her being here has forced us to live like a normal family, and eat dinner more or less together most days. I've actually cooked three times in one week.
The whole thing is giving me a severe case of deja vu, with this odd sort of double vision overlaying my perception of Camille's experience with my memories of my own study-abroad. For example, her English is really quite good, and makes me think that maybe one reason my stay in France was so difficult was that, not only was my French extremely basic in those days, but maybe the family themselves expected a higher level of French from me, and were taken aback by how hard it was for me to communicate. Camille can understand most of what we say, though I make an effort to slow down and separate my words a bit more than I normally would. Her spoken English is heavily accented, and sometimes she slows down as she searches for words, but it's very clear and understandable. As we've gotten more comfortable together, she has started to give me the word in French when she gets stuck, so I can help her assimilate new vocabulary.
Z is not getting as much interaction with her as I'd hoped, again due to her (and his!) schedules, but we all spent an hour playing with Legos this weekend. Camille wants to be an architect, so her Lego creation was quite impressive--a two story house complete with staircase. :)
Since the exchange program is supplying her with most of the usual Atlanta tourist experiences, I"ve had to be creative in supplementing it. Yesterday we went to the Museum of Design, where they are hosting an exhibit on women video game designers. There were various stations set up to explore different games, some of which were non-commercial "art games." Some were pretty cool, and some were so artistic as to be unplayable.
My favorite was Ninja Shadow Warriors, a photo booth that required us to shape our bodies to fill out the silhouette of an object projected on the screen. The program scored us based on how closely we fit the silhouette--and then snapped a picture of our contorted carcasses to post on the designers' website. Is this art, or a psychology experiment?
The whole thing is giving me a severe case of deja vu, with this odd sort of double vision overlaying my perception of Camille's experience with my memories of my own study-abroad. For example, her English is really quite good, and makes me think that maybe one reason my stay in France was so difficult was that, not only was my French extremely basic in those days, but maybe the family themselves expected a higher level of French from me, and were taken aback by how hard it was for me to communicate. Camille can understand most of what we say, though I make an effort to slow down and separate my words a bit more than I normally would. Her spoken English is heavily accented, and sometimes she slows down as she searches for words, but it's very clear and understandable. As we've gotten more comfortable together, she has started to give me the word in French when she gets stuck, so I can help her assimilate new vocabulary.
Z is not getting as much interaction with her as I'd hoped, again due to her (and his!) schedules, but we all spent an hour playing with Legos this weekend. Camille wants to be an architect, so her Lego creation was quite impressive--a two story house complete with staircase. :)
Since the exchange program is supplying her with most of the usual Atlanta tourist experiences, I"ve had to be creative in supplementing it. Yesterday we went to the Museum of Design, where they are hosting an exhibit on women video game designers. There were various stations set up to explore different games, some of which were non-commercial "art games." Some were pretty cool, and some were so artistic as to be unplayable.
My favorite was Ninja Shadow Warriors, a photo booth that required us to shape our bodies to fill out the silhouette of an object projected on the screen. The program scored us based on how closely we fit the silhouette--and then snapped a picture of our contorted carcasses to post on the designers' website. Is this art, or a psychology experiment?