Long entry
"Vos enfants sont très beaux. Ils sont adoptes?"
Last week I went to a couple villages near Marsille (Mazargues, and Cassis) and Florence and it was lovely. I went hiking near Cassis and spent a few hours hanging out by one of the Calanques, which are absolutely gorgeous, the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen, then wandered back to the port where I met several old men playing petanque. It was a really nice day.
In Italy I went to Florence, where a man acted like he was in love with me and was my personal tourguide/Italian buddy for a few days, showing me cool places in town and telling me stories and teaching me a few phrases in Italian. We went to Pisa together the day I left, which was a terrible adventure in itself, which involved me breaking down and nearly crying at the ferrovia while he spoke rapid Italian and the train guy gave me half a Kinder Bueno to cheer me up. When I was finally on my way back to France I met another cool Florentine guy who discussed the merits of French and Italian cuisine with me. It went like this: the French make great cheese and wine, but when you go to a French restaurant you mainly just pay a lot and leave hungry, whereas, when you go to an Italian restaurant, you have a feast for the mouth and stomach. No one beats the Italians in the kitchen, etc. and summed up his criticism of French cuisine by saying, "The Italian food in France is terrible." "Really?" I asked about the Barilla spaghetti they sell everywhere here, which is supposed to be No.1 in Italy, and he said it's the No.1 most advertised, but far from the best. I said something like, man, I should have bought some spaghetti while I was there, and he gave me a wink and said, "Hold on," and pulled out a bag of spaghetti from his duffel bag. It was amazing. I can't really taste the difference, but the fact that Italians travel with bags of their spaghetti convince me of their worth.
A few days after scheduling an interview with me the Consulate decided to tell me that they won't be
accepting me for the internship after all. When I asked for an explanation, this is what they said:
Dear Sonya,
The security office said there were too many pending issues in your
security clearance case and that it would take several more months to
complete the investigation. Given this the consulate in Toulouse
determined it would be best to abandon your internship candidature. From
what they understood you will be leaving Toulouse around the end of May
which means we would not be able to meet the State Departments ten week
requirement for the internship, and since you were going to be part-time
we would have to insist on more than ten weeks. We do regret that it could
not work out.
Jennifer Martin
I said it seemed normal that it should take longer for my security
clearance since I got my package a month and a half after everyone else,
then it took me some time to go up to Paris to finish it, and I will
actually be here until July. Well, we'll see how they'll reply. Perhaps
they just decided they don't want me. Apparently they're a bunch of lazy
asses and several other people have been wondering what's going on with
their security clearance as well. Most of the prospective interns, all of
who supposedly start in February, are still in the states wondering when
they should book their plane tickets for.
My classes have begun and seem to be going well so far. I'm taking a
French literature class, which is hard. I feel so blind and ignorant. I
asked the teacher if I should even be in this class, since I've never
taken a lit class before and had no idea how to analyze literature and see
all the things he saw in the text, and he replied, "Quit worrying. It will
come." He's an interesting lecturer and the texts we'll be reading are
classics (in the sense that they're very old and use classic French); for
example, the first text we're reading is La Princesse de Clèves, from the
1600's, the first modern novel. Another text, Liaisons Dangereuses, I've
read before in English and found fascinating. It will be good to reread it
in French and have this guy explain all the subtleties that minds like
mine miss.
I'm taking a second year English-French translation class which is proving
to be incredibly difficult. I can get by in daily French, but translating
English literature into French is beyond my powers. I can't even come up
with ungrammatical approximations... But that, too, will come.
My third class is an Art History class which starts with the beginnings of
modern art in the 1830's in France and continues through the rise of
Impressionism. The French style of teaching is incredible difficult to
swallow - four hours of straight lecturing and note-taking. However, the
teacher is young and pretty and very nice, and the first thing I thought
when I saw her was, if I was still in elementary, all the kids in the
class would be in love with her. As it was, the class is fairly
interesting, especially ever since I went to Florence and started reading
novels on art history. I spoke with her after the class and she asked if I
was from England, and I replied the States, so ever since then whenever
there has been a really difficult to spell French word she would spell it
out during the lecture, glancing at me. It is as personal as teachers ever
get in these lecture classes, and I really like her.
I have a fourth class on the evolution of French from Latin and constants and
variations in Romance Languages (basically, nickname analysis in French, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, and, for the fun of it, English, that sounds reminiscent of my nickname project in Russian last year).
I'm really looking forward to this semester.
Last week I went to a couple villages near Marsille (Mazargues, and Cassis) and Florence and it was lovely. I went hiking near Cassis and spent a few hours hanging out by one of the Calanques, which are absolutely gorgeous, the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen, then wandered back to the port where I met several old men playing petanque. It was a really nice day.
In Italy I went to Florence, where a man acted like he was in love with me and was my personal tourguide/Italian buddy for a few days, showing me cool places in town and telling me stories and teaching me a few phrases in Italian. We went to Pisa together the day I left, which was a terrible adventure in itself, which involved me breaking down and nearly crying at the ferrovia while he spoke rapid Italian and the train guy gave me half a Kinder Bueno to cheer me up. When I was finally on my way back to France I met another cool Florentine guy who discussed the merits of French and Italian cuisine with me. It went like this: the French make great cheese and wine, but when you go to a French restaurant you mainly just pay a lot and leave hungry, whereas, when you go to an Italian restaurant, you have a feast for the mouth and stomach. No one beats the Italians in the kitchen, etc. and summed up his criticism of French cuisine by saying, "The Italian food in France is terrible." "Really?" I asked about the Barilla spaghetti they sell everywhere here, which is supposed to be No.1 in Italy, and he said it's the No.1 most advertised, but far from the best. I said something like, man, I should have bought some spaghetti while I was there, and he gave me a wink and said, "Hold on," and pulled out a bag of spaghetti from his duffel bag. It was amazing. I can't really taste the difference, but the fact that Italians travel with bags of their spaghetti convince me of their worth.
A few days after scheduling an interview with me the Consulate decided to tell me that they won't be
accepting me for the internship after all. When I asked for an explanation, this is what they said:
Dear Sonya,
The security office said there were too many pending issues in your
security clearance case and that it would take several more months to
complete the investigation. Given this the consulate in Toulouse
determined it would be best to abandon your internship candidature. From
what they understood you will be leaving Toulouse around the end of May
which means we would not be able to meet the State Departments ten week
requirement for the internship, and since you were going to be part-time
we would have to insist on more than ten weeks. We do regret that it could
not work out.
Jennifer Martin
I said it seemed normal that it should take longer for my security
clearance since I got my package a month and a half after everyone else,
then it took me some time to go up to Paris to finish it, and I will
actually be here until July. Well, we'll see how they'll reply. Perhaps
they just decided they don't want me. Apparently they're a bunch of lazy
asses and several other people have been wondering what's going on with
their security clearance as well. Most of the prospective interns, all of
who supposedly start in February, are still in the states wondering when
they should book their plane tickets for.
My classes have begun and seem to be going well so far. I'm taking a
French literature class, which is hard. I feel so blind and ignorant. I
asked the teacher if I should even be in this class, since I've never
taken a lit class before and had no idea how to analyze literature and see
all the things he saw in the text, and he replied, "Quit worrying. It will
come." He's an interesting lecturer and the texts we'll be reading are
classics (in the sense that they're very old and use classic French); for
example, the first text we're reading is La Princesse de Clèves, from the
1600's, the first modern novel. Another text, Liaisons Dangereuses, I've
read before in English and found fascinating. It will be good to reread it
in French and have this guy explain all the subtleties that minds like
mine miss.
I'm taking a second year English-French translation class which is proving
to be incredibly difficult. I can get by in daily French, but translating
English literature into French is beyond my powers. I can't even come up
with ungrammatical approximations... But that, too, will come.
My third class is an Art History class which starts with the beginnings of
modern art in the 1830's in France and continues through the rise of
Impressionism. The French style of teaching is incredible difficult to
swallow - four hours of straight lecturing and note-taking. However, the
teacher is young and pretty and very nice, and the first thing I thought
when I saw her was, if I was still in elementary, all the kids in the
class would be in love with her. As it was, the class is fairly
interesting, especially ever since I went to Florence and started reading
novels on art history. I spoke with her after the class and she asked if I
was from England, and I replied the States, so ever since then whenever
there has been a really difficult to spell French word she would spell it
out during the lecture, glancing at me. It is as personal as teachers ever
get in these lecture classes, and I really like her.
I have a fourth class on the evolution of French from Latin and constants and
variations in Romance Languages (basically, nickname analysis in French, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, and, for the fun of it, English, that sounds reminiscent of my nickname project in Russian last year).
I'm really looking forward to this semester.