3.5.09

Fish

I am also breaking the posting in pairs guideline simply because this is long enough for three, and Maggie is busy gathering fish tales in Florida to add to the next one....










Poisson d’avril !
April’s Fish!

French lesson:
Etiquette- label
Politesse- etiquette
Déception- disappointment
Tromperie- deception
Talkie-walkie- walkie-talkie

The following are the same word in French:
To tempt= to attempt
Fad= obstruction
Silver= money
Lawyer= advocate= avocado (my favorite)

French idioms and expressions:
She’s a pot of paint- she wears too much makeup
A sighing quarter- a sixteenth note rest
It’s raining cords- it’s raining cats and dogs
It’s a duck- it’s really cold out
I pass the sponge- excuse me/ I am sorry
250 of our era- 250 AD
He posed a sheep- he stood me up
His head is in the moon- His head is in the clouds
Bust support- bra
Apples of the earth- potatoes
Apples of the pine- pinecones
Apples- carrots (just kidding!)
Moving sand- sinking sand
I have the beetle- I am depressed
I have frogs in my stomach- my tummy is growling
My liver hurts- I have an upset stomach*
The century of lights- The Enlightenment
Make a hundred steps- pace the floor
Window licking- window shopping
Cat in my throat- frog in my throat
I have 65 spring(time)s- I am 65 years old
Medusa- jellyfish
Iron straw- steel wool
A brings-speech- speaker
Chicken nest- pot hole
Little lunch- breakfast
*according to my professor, the French have the unique ability to determine exactly which organ in their body is in pain. “Pain of the liver is a very distinct feeling…”

French we use:
Aller-haup (pronounced allay-up)- the French equivalent of upsi-daisy
Déjà vu- already seen
Adieu- at God (goodbye for good)
Hors d’oeuvre- outside of work
Bon bon­- good good
À la mode- in the fashion
Faux pas- false step*
Mousse- moss (I never knew either…)
Brassière- sleeved shirt for infants; shoulder strap
* If you want to say “watch your step” in French: avoid any faux pas

The definition of the passive voice: a tense used to hide information, in the case of the ignorance of information or to insist on certain information. Principally used by journalists, police, politicians and diplomats.

France has a Minister of Equality of Chance.

How to say “cotton candy” across the world :
France- Papa’s beard
Korea- spider web
Saudi Arabia- girl’s hair

April Fool’s Day in France is celebrated with the sole prank of taping a paper fish to someone’s back, and upon them noticing, shouting “April’s Fish!” and swapping fish-shaped chocolates.
The Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, rather the church bells bring eggs to all the children. They brought me a fresh bouquet of my favorite flowers (Nicole told me it was the Easter bells, but I suspect she picked them from her garden).
I had to write two papers for civilization and art history classes on the topics of Bohemian Montmartre, and Édouard Manet’s Olympia, a controversial painting that changed the idea of the nude in art and took realism to the extreme. Fun facts: Bohemians were named such as it was believed that all nomadic workers came from the city of Bohemia in what is now Czech Republic. Demimondes (literally “half-world”) were fashionable femmes de la nuit who were in between the two worlds of upper class society and prostitution. Between the two papers, I can now say prostitute in French at least five different ways.
A few months ago I couldn’t make scrambled eggs, and now I am swapping recipes with a French cook (…Nicole wants a recipe I found online)…we cultural foods day at school. I made apple pie with ice cream.
Nicole and Claude have been taking me to Claude’s house in Loches on the weekends. The first trip there I listened to records on Claude’s 1904 phonograph, saw some sights and got really car sick. Half the way there they argued about directions. I saw Claude’s cave, man-made by the removal of stone for the construction of local cathedrals and chateaus, and converted by Claude into a cozy hang-out. Last time we went flea marketing (or empty attics, as they call them) and Claude bought me nearly a dozen old records for my phonograph. We checked out a fossil museum, met the children of the inventor of the xylophone, saw glass blowing in action, had a traditional French meal, were chased by a bike race and stopped to take pictures of the fields of yellow flowers that speckle the French countryside in springtime. The next day we all went to a phonograph museum (the phonograph was actually invented by a French man named Charles, but sadly he was too poor to carry out his design so Edison beat him to it) and had wine with the owner and his wife, who has a generous frog collection.
I have been mistaken at least five times for being British when I speak French. A French gentleman asked me if I was Polish, and upon asking how he knew he said he could tell by my accent.

Spring Break:
Paris-


Remember the "Trtl" incident in Detroit in 2004? In the same vein of thought, these guys have mysteriously been showing up all over Paris. Only Parisians would make graffiti out of mosaics...
I saw the Calder exhibit at the inside-out Centre Pompidou (the frame of the building was built on the exterior, escalators and all) at night and overlooked the city from the rooftop.
Visited the infamous Montmartre with Liz (an American who lived in Korea for three years helping bring the 2010 Worlds Fair to Seoul) where we saw the Sacre Coeur, Lapin Agile (café frequented by Van Gogh, Lautrec and Picasso, who traded his sketches for food. The story goes the owner, André Gill, used to invite all his bohemian friends to “beef parties”, at one of which he drunkenly painted a rabbit in a pot as a form of entertainment for his guests. The café thus became Lapin à Gill, or “Gill’s Rabbit”, which cleverly morphed into Lapin Agile, or “Agile Rabbit”. The rabbit in the painting comes from a medieval fairy tale of a rabbit who played the fiddle whose sweet music made people forget who they were, in order that he could cause all sorts of mischief.), a hilltop musée and enjoyed a lunch of hot mulled wine, French onion soup and escargots.
From here I departed to visit the Père Lachaise cemetery, at Prof Bushey’s recommendation, followed by an underground catacomb which buried its dead in a surprising manor (a twenty-minute walk through tunnels of bones and skulls stacked, often in decorative patterns, from floor to ceiling. The cemetery was originally above ground, but when an epidemic broke out in that quarter of Paris several hundred years ago originating from the cemetery, the catacomb was quickly constructed. At the end of the tour was a table of skulls, next to which stood a security guard who checked backpacks…
Stopped at a flea/ farmer’s market where I tried red currents for the first time and was stopped by a merchant who informed me that the fruit is used only to top confections and cakes, and by eating an entire package I would promptly gain weight (“No marriage for you.”).
Krakow, Poland-
My hostel was located just outside the old town square, where I saw St. Mary’s church and the Cloth Hall. Took a walk to the old Jewish town and had a lunch of matzo ball soup and Passover cheese, a sweet cheese mixed with raisins and topped with whipped cream. Crossed the Vistula River, bought traditional Polish shoes at a flea market, had “Polish breakfast” (eggs, vegetables, Polish sausages, mustard, cheese, mini loaf of bread, tea) at an original Art Nouveau café, saw the National and the Japanese Art museums, attended Polish mass in the Paulite church (I think?), saw a Chopin concert, made friends with a homeless woman who asked me if I was pregnant at the Franciscan church, climbed the hill topped by Wawel Castle, took a four hour train ride to the Zakopane Mountains only upon arriving to cross the platform and take the train back (due to a communication issue at the train station) and ate long bean pierogi, beetroot borscht soup, potato pancakes with sweet cream (which is actually liquid sour cream), Herring with sour cream (which is actually cole slaw), meatpie and drank blank currant juice and five different types of vodka, including honey and caramel flavors.
Warsaw, Poland-
Saw Wilanowski Palace which contained a room that was still used by the communist government up until the twenty-first century to host dignitaries such as Charles de Gaule, who was so tall that they had to extend the original palace bed. It also hosted original Baroque frescos and sculptures, ancient Greek pottery, Roman sarcophagi, paintings by David and Rembrandt and a room fabled for the event of a dinner between a Polish king and a Bishop, during which the king incessantly questioned the bishop in which part of the body the soul was held. Outside the castle I was stopped by a professor of Polish language and history who talked for an hour about the history of the castle and surrounding buildings in a mixture of Polish, Latin, Italian, broken English, and gestures. I also saw a poster museum and the National Museum where hung a collection of paintings of the ultimate Jesus fanatic, Saint Catherine of Siena. Her story: Besieged by Demons, Drinking from the Side Wound of Jesus, The Miraculous Communion and Exchanging Hearts with Jesus. Ouch. I drank bread acid and ate peirogie with groats, sweet peirogie with black currant and cheese, a pastry with-surprise!- an entire pear inside, and goose with beet root. Then the Royal Palace, Art Café, a hole-in-the wall vintage shop, a Haydn concert and a Beethoven concert in the Palace.
Budapest, Hungary-
Strolled down antique street, saw the 100-person Gypsy orchestra (Hungarian performances are peculiar- after each song, the audience claps, the entire orchestra takes bows, including the soloists one at a time, the audience continues clapping, slowly starting in unison and picking up the pace until the orchestra begins playing again), checked out the Hungarian flea market (even better than the Polish! Hand embroidery, vintage clothes, Iranian antiques, Hungarian fair food, all for pocket change. I got physically pushed out of a booth for offering what was apparently an offensively low price for a Hungarian rug….1000 forint seems like it would be a lot…), saw Blackrider, a musical performed in Hungarian, sung and English and subtitled across the curtain featuring music written by Tom Waits, climbed a cliff that overlooked the city, bathed at an original the Turkish bath dating back to 1565, Király, with natural hot springs, attended a Hungarian folk dancing festival, explored the Pálvőlgy Cave formed by natural hot springs (lamer than it sounds- the tour guide spent the entire 20 minute tour pointing his flashlight at each stalagmite saying “This one looks like an elephant. This one looks like the seven dwarfs. This one is a crocodile…”), tried Slovakian noodles with ewe cheese, carp fish soup (a pepper based red soup with a slab of fish floating in it) and wild boar roasted in red wine sauce, and went broke (due to overwhelming flea market) and had to replace a few meals with pastries and corn-on-the-cob sold by street vendors. I also ran out of laundry and had to wear an ensemble of a turn-of-the-century reproduction dress, traditional Polish shoes and 1970’s vintage scarf. The only way I could leave the hostel was by telling myself that people might think it is some kind of foreign high fashion.

A new Saudi Arabian student will be living with me and Nicole this trimester. Her name is Munira. She’s into photography and is in France to finish her studies in law to be one of the first female lawyers upon her return to Saudi Arabia. She is teaching me and Nicole how to speak Arabic, as well as how to wrap my head in the Palestinian fashion.

Easter Sunday was spent in Chartres with my Belgian friend, Annelie. Due do the lack of vocabulary for bus stop, we mistook our bus for a train and missed it. The cathedral was full of pop-singing nuns, neon light projections and women dressed up as priests. We climbed the church tower (discovering midway Annelie has vertigo) and took the pTGV (“petite TGV train”) on a tour around town. We had coffee at an outdoor café with a view of the cathedral, and ate “baby Jesus’ ”.

In another vocabulary blunder, I accidentally ate a rabbit tart.

I recently went to Potiers with some friends to visit our Canadian-American friend David (pronounced Da-vEEd in France), who currently lives at a chateau. He gave us a tour of the grounds, we prepared lunch together in the kitchen and ate and drank in the garden. His friends, who are out of town, own the chateau and rent it out at 10 000€ a month. He is watching their cat.

French Labor Day was spent in Sixmilebridge, Ireland near Shannon. An intense televised Guitar Hero battle was the talk of the town. I saw Bunratty Castle, Limerick and the Cliffs of Moher, shared a taxi with a French couple, got lost in rural Ireland on a bank holiday, got a ride to the middle of nowhere from some foreign women and was finally taken to the airport by Seamus Walsh. I tasted Guinness and Ginger Root beer and sheep’s cheese. In France, people exchange Muget flowers for Labor Day.

Last weekend Nicole and Claude took me on a “surprise” adventure to an antique shop/ café combination and a cave-farm from the Middle Ages with Munira, who made a video of the event. I also caught the Joan of Arc parade at Orléans and the fair at Tours with friends.

I am proud to announce that my mother was the first in her interior design class to receive a 100% on her final design project, consisting of presentation board and three-dimensional model, from her professor of seven years.

The Ten and Six EP is out, check it out here. Chouette!

Désolée francophones….vraiment trop long pour écrire. Mais, je serais contente de vous raconter mes aventures moi-même. Et, si vous aimez la musique, vous aimerez beaucoup ça. Chouette !


Carly

2.5.09

Awesome

This may not technically be a post in pairs, but it is Maggie posting something by Carly. That sort of works.