Hear O' Followers!

During finals week everything seems to be dominated by the
shadow of looming exams, so to truly relax during winter break I’ve been
recollecting on the blissful days of study abroad.

I think my bio mentions that I studied at Oxford last year.
But, that doesn’t really explain it all. The way I came to apply to Oxford is
strange enough:

Every Colby student is asked to fill out a preliminary
application to the Office of Off-Campus Study (OCS) so that the office can
begin to compile data of who is going abroad where, when, and for how long. To
many people’s astonishment, I wrote that I wanted to study at the University of
Hawai’i. (Yeah, it’s not technically abroad, but I’ve never been there… so it
would be a different experience. That counts, right?) But I received an E-mail
from OCS saying, “Michael, please schedule an appointment with us as soon as
possible.” When I finally met with an OCS representative, I was told that Colby
would let me go to Hawai’i, but not through OCS — i.e., not for credit. So I
said, “I’ll apply to Oxford then.” If anybody at Oxford is reading this: Yes,
you were my second choice to the State University of Hawai’i. (I just think I
can philosophize better on a beach)

But once I got to England, I found out quickly that Oxford
should have been my first choice. The city was beautiful and filled with old
buildings, old statues, and even older history. But walking through the
streets, I couldn’t help by laugh at how more than 80% of the population was
18-25 years old.

But why was abroad “blissful?” First, I didn’t have to take
any exams (or, as the Brits say, “sit exams”). Next, although I was writing at
least an essay every week, the topic was often “write anything on this topic.”
But the ultimate bliss of Oxford was the semester schedule. Oxford is on a
trimester schedule: 8-week terms followed by 8-week breaks. And since I despise
flying, I just took the train to Europe for my breaks. The food, the beer, the
people, the sights, and the travel! Because so many Colby students study abroad,
I traveled from one Colby friend to another: Salamanca, Paris, and Florence.
And when these epic breaks were over, I just returned to the quaint medieval
city with her “dreaming spires,” to study amid the gothic architecture and
700-year-old schools.

Oxford was an intense academic experience, but it’s hard to
concentrate on that part when I had so much fun tramping across Europe.

Snap back to reality. My daily view of the Radcliffe Camera
is now a view of the Chrysler Building. Happy and Sweet New Year.

My happiest three days in Senegal were spent in the fishing village Mouit, about thirty minutes outside of Saint Louis.

When we arrived we all sat on giant mats in the middle of a circle while the village elders greeted us. The chief and the imam both welcomed us in Wolof while our professor translated to French. Then one by one our names were called and our new moms walked us back to our new houses.

My mom's name was Mame Rama Diangne. She is absolutely the most joyous woman I have ever met. Even though we could barely communicate, we loved each other immediately because we both laugh and smile so much.  

Communication was challenging but incredibly fun. Most people in the village only spoke Wolof, but my two oldest sisters spoke comparable French to me, which was really nice. I picked up a ton of new vocabulary mostly centered around eating, and I got a lot better at listening to Wolof even if I didn't know how to respond. In general I just laughed and was laughed at a lot.

We were prepped for "rouging it" and some girls were worried about it, but it was very, very easy and comfortable. My family had a small concrete house within a pretty large sandy courtyard. They had an outdoor kitchen and a pick pen of goats and sheep outside. I slept in a room with my oldest sister on a mattress and although it was hot, it wasn't nearly the stifling heat of Pikine. The only discomfort of the weekend really was that I was dirty a lot and got eaten alive by mosquitoes. We were also prepared to eat bizarre foods, but I ate the best I have since I got here. I got to help prepare ceebu jen, the most popular dish in Senegal, which involved learning how to gut fish and cook rice. I went to the market in the morning with my mom and we got all of the ingredients for it right there. (The market in Mouit is nothing like a market in the city. It's all of the women in the village gossiping and trading together under two giant baobabs.) So I had amazing ceebu jen a couple times and this yougurt millet dish called larr all of the time…maybe too much because I always chose to eat what they gave me over being impolite. I got to drink cafe touba for breakfast every morning, which is REAL coffee with a ton of sugar and spices in it.

One day I watched two sheep get their throats slit and then I ate one of their stomachs, but the rest of that dish was really wonderful, so it was fine.

Hi, my name is Clare and I’m a list maker. I know it's a problem, but it’s what I do.  While I’m at Colby, my weekly planner is my lifeline.  Each morning, I christen the box corresponding to that day with a list of things I will do before the sun creeps below the horizon of Mayflower Hill.  Each item, of course, has a box next to it that I relish in checking when the task has been accomplished.  I also have long-term lists, you know, things that I swear to myself I will accomplish before the end of the week, month, or even year.  I agree, it’s a little crazy. 

Now that I’m abroad in London, where I know I have a limited amount of precious time, I’ve been going a little overboard with the lists.  Opportunities abound!  There are dozens of museums I want to visit, scores of monuments, and about ten different day and weekend trips to plan.  And I’ve been trying to plan excursions to all of those historical sites and travel to all of those places, in addition to managing three classes and an internship. Needless to say, I have a lot going on.  Here’s an example of a list for a typical weekday:

-Attend class 9am -1 pm

-Run around perimeter of Hyde Park (about 5 miles!)

-Wade through the galleries at the Imperial War Museum

-Read a textbook chapter for European Capital Markets class

-Go pubbing with my “flatmates”

-Skype with my boyfriend, who is back at Colby

Do you notice anything strange about this list?  At first, I didn’t either.  But, after living this way for a few weeks, I realized that, despite scheduling almost every minute of my day, there were a few things I’d forgotten to pencil in.  For example eating, sleeping, and reading a pleasure book (the only thing that keeps me sane!), all important parts of the average person's day, are noticeably absent.  After a fortnight of living this way, I had become to feel a little run down, a little on edge. After re-evaluating my approach to study abroad, I’ve decided to cut down on the obsessive planning a bit.  I don’t think I could ever totally quit my habit of list making, but I think this is a valuable firststep. 

So a month (and countless awe-inspiring experiences) into the study abroad experience, the lesson I have learned is this: SLOW DOWN.  Everyone requires an hour or two a day of down time, to simply do something (or nothing) that puts them at ease.  Every minute of every day does not need to be dedicated to something constructive, per se.  Until the next time, cheers mate!

London Eye

Asaalamalekum! I've been in Senegal for three weeks now, and I'm living in Point E, Dakar, in the same neighborhood as my school. My homestay mom is currently in Mecca leading a trip and she will be home soon. She runs a small health clinic that is on the bottom floor of my house. All of our families have maids here, which is very common for the middle class, and because my mom isn't home I mostly hang out with my family's maid. Her name is Nogaye, she's 21 and we're already great friends. We talk about things like boys, Facebook, clothes, Rihanna, MTV, dancing, family, university, Usher, America….she's very interested in what American teenagers do. She's also very patient with my French and waits for me to use my dictionary when I need to use it. Just the two of us eat dinner together every night, so it's kind of like living with a roommate. She took my friend Bailee and me to get our nails henna tattooed for Korite the other day in a crazy packed market.

Because my homestay family isn't around right now, I went with Nogaye to visit her family in Pikine for Korite, the giant party at the end of Ramadan. Pikine is a small town outside of Dakar, away from the bigger buildings, screeching taxis and smog. Her whole family only spoke Wolof so there was a lot of pointing and laughing involved, but somehow I still made friends. Everyone was just very interested in engaging in conversation with me and patient with our language barriers. One of Nogaye's friends named Osmene spoke french and we got to talk for a while about Senegalese politics and the poverty of Pikine. My French vocabulary is improving quickly even if my grammar is still questionable. I was fed constantly over the weekend, so I learned lots of Wolof vocabulary about food, eating, drinking. I "slept" on one mattress with three other girls and no fan and was woken each morning at 5am by chanting at the mosque across the street, but it was still wonderful.

Every night we all just stayed up absurdly late talking and drinking ataya (a very strong, very caffeinated tea) on the street. On the second morning I woke up to the loudest thunderstorm I have ever heard. It probably rained for about four hours but the entire outdoor courtyard and all of the roads were flooded immediately. Men were up to mid-thigh walking up and down the street. Everyone came out of their houses to watch or start using sandbags. We thought we would be stuck there for days but the water receded a little bit and we waded to dry land to take a taxi back to Dakar later in the day.
 
Definitely the best adventure of Senegal so far—a wonderful weekend of learning to communicate and connect and without language. This weekend I leave for a northern village called Mouit and I can’t wait to explore another part of the country.

I'm big on libraries. Maybe I read too many fantasy novels as a kid, but when people told me that libraries were magical portals that could transport you to other worlds, I used to take it semi-literally. Even now, I can recite my hometown library card number off the top of my head but frequently forget my credit card digits. (Yes, I'm aware that's pathetic.) The fact that Colby has three – three! – libraries at a school with only 1,800 students was a really big selling point for me.

The fact that I love libraries so much might be the main reason I can't wholeheartedly entertain thoughts of moving to Paris permanently after graduation. Because – as I remarked in a blog post during my time abroad last year – Parisian libraries are scary, scary places. Their librarians are not warm and fuzzy creatures who host library game nights (see pictures 22-26). They are those forbidding mothers you occasionally see on the playground, guarding their children like they are the Holy Grails of Toddlers. (You know the type: the mothers who only feed their children weird bits of algae, so that the bliss that is a warm chocolate chip cookie will forever be ruined for the kids' poor, delicate stomachs.)

These metaphorical children, of course, are the massive collections of archived documents and literature in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. I understand the paranoia, I really do. Those resources are amazing, and they should be kept safe and intact.

Still. 

Take this translated and abridged transcript of a conversation I had yesterday with a librarian. For context, I was searching for articles in two 19th century periodicals, part of my job as Professor Paliyenko's research assistant. I'd already visited one library in vain. At the next, I'd been sent back and forth between two desks so I could try and gain access to the special collections and make a photocopy. It seemed I'd finally found someone who could help me.

Me: Hello, Madame! I hope you can help me.

Librarian: (looks skeptical)

Me: (nervous laugh) See, I'm the research assistant to the head of the French department at a school in the United States. I'm trying to find this article… (I hold out the information; she stares disdainfully at my messy handwriting)

Librarian: Where is your documentation?

Me: My – documentation – oh, here's my passport, and my International Student ID Card, and my Colby student ID card, and…

Librarian: You do not have documentation?

Me: I thought from the website that this was what I needed to access -

Librarian: You need a signed official letter from the head researcher and a request form to have access to these archives. The request form must be filled out at least 48 hours before your arrival.

Me: I'm really sorry, I don't have a letter like that. If you need to see what my professor is writing about, I can show you the introduction to her book in progress? I have a printed version of it in my bag…

Librarian: That is not an acceptable form of documentation.

Me: Ah. Okay. Well, the problem is, I'm leaving the country in just a couple days, and I don't have access to a fax machine for my professor to send over a signed letter -

Librarian: Then I cannot help you, can I? (She turns back to her computer decidedly.)

See what I mean? TERRIFYING. And I'm not even transcribing the part where I kept trying to argue with her very politely and she gave me multiple looks of death. If I keel over for no apparent reason in the near future, you know who to blame.

Hm. Maybe the French government is secretly training new covert agents for state defense. If so, I know where they work by day.

Far before I boarded the plane to Paris, my mother asked me something in the solemn kind of voice you usually expect from someone who wants to borrow money or needs help burying a body in the desert. “You’ll go to the Hermès sale with me, won’t you?” she requested, eyes wide. I laughed a little, amused by the dramatics, but nodded.

For those who don’t know Hermès, it’s a Parisian luxury goods and fashion house that sells things I never thought would have a three-digit price tag, like beach towels. Scarves are one of its specialties and are what interest my mother, an avid collector. For years, she’d dreamed about attending the mythical biannual Hermès sale in Paris. This January was her first opportunity.

And so, good little anthropology student that I am, here is an account of the first day of the January 2010 Hermès sale, alternately titled, “Gird Your Loins, They’re Bringing Out the Plissés.” (Plissé is a kind of scarf. Trust me, before last week, I knew nothing about them either.)

1/20/2010.

3:45am. My mother wakes me up, brimming over with nervous energy. Blearily, I drink two sips of the coffee offered to me and get dressed. As I put on a scarf that cost me 6 euro at a Parisian marketplace, I dimly register that I’m not quite Hermès’ target audience.

4:41am. We arrive at Porte Maillot, near the outskirts of Paris. It is still very dark. My mother pays our taxi driver, with whom she has just maintained a chipper conversation for our half hour drive. God knows I don’t have that kind of energy. Maybe I’m adopted.

4:43am. There are four other people here, lined up in the cold outside the building doors. The way my mom was talking, I was expecting hordes. Is matricide still illegal?

5:12am. There’s a veritable line now, and I forgive my mother for the early wakeup time. Because of it, we’re right up front. A security guard, regarding us like escapees from a mental facility, offers to open up the front doors half an hour early at 5:30, and points to the escalators upstairs where we’ll need to go. Then he returns to his guard dog, a Rottweiler who looks much less intimidating when playing catch.

5:14am. Oh dear, people around me are trying to make conversation in French. Maybe I should have drank more of that coffee.

5:31am. The front doors are opened. Mass pandemonium ensues. People in the back of the line start running to try and cut, and soon it’s a veritable stampede, a charging of the bulls up the escalator and to the next waiting area. My mother’s in the front-lines, her spot assured by an adolescence on the track team, so I hang back to help the security guard pick up some of the wreckage.

5:35am. Find my mother upstairs at the front of the line again. The first three women in line camped out here overnight. I feel much warmer toward my mother for not making me sleep in a tent.

5:49am. Boy, I really should have brought a book.

6:01am. Well. Lots of cracks in the ceiling. Let’s count the tiles now…

6:24am. Hermès fans know not to wear their scarves to the sale, as they’ll have to check them in with security, sucking up time to get to the best stock. Some seem slightly lost without them, like birds that have just lost their plumage. “I’ve been to every sale,” one pushy French woman says almost aggressively behind me. I grasp the message. I should be further ahead in line than you are.

7:05am. Security moves us in packs of ten to a better waiting area, with barricades set up to prevent people from cutting. This must be how sheep feel during those sheep dog herding demonstrations.

8:30am. Half an hour to go till opening! Everyone’s very awake right now and chattering excitedly. I keep spying on newcomers through a crack in the barricade. They have to go the end of the very, very long line, but they’re all holding coffee cups. Boy do I want their coffee.

8:45am. The guards let us check our coats and proceed to the next (and final) waiting area. My mother has already given me her coat and dashes forward with the rest as soon as she’s given the opportunity; I edge my way over to the coat check through the throngs.

8:46am. I remember a scene in The Poisonwood Bible where one of the daughters stuck her elbows out while caught in a human stampede. Her elbows out, she was lifted by the movement of those around her and avoided being trampled. Maybe I should try it.

8:47am. Silly me! I forgot pointy elbows are the weapon of choice around here; all I’d accomplish would be pain in my funny bone. A man behind me tries to argue his way to the front of the coat check – “I have a bag!” he says in English, and “Yeah, so do I!” I reply, holding up my own – and then pretends he doesn’t understand English after all, shoving in front of me in an entirely different kind of language.

9:04am. I enter the Hermès sale room. Hello, brave new world. I stand to the side with the Hermès salespeople, who are decked out in an orange that screams 'retail warrior.'

9:05am. My mother, who was among the first to enter, is also one of the first three to be helped at the shawls. There's a scuffle further back in the line as one woman grabs the shoulder of another woman to take her place; the shovee starts bawling. Does she have a shoulder injury?

9:15am. The woman is still sobbing. I’m starting to get the idea it’s due less to pain and more because she lost her place in line.

10:01am. As crowds simmer, social niceties make a comeback.

11:34am. Phase I: Grab and Go – is complete. Now it’s time for Phase II: Does This Alarming Shade of Orange Make Me Look Like I Have Jaundice? My mother carefully inspects the scarves for defects and makes her choices. It’s rather incomprehensible why Hermès uses so much orange and yellow in their scarves. Do they think people want to look like traffic cones?

11:59am. Still – looking at my mother’s orange-free final choices, there’s an undeniable, gorgeous artistry even I can see. I understand why she loves them so much. She’s practically glowing, thrilled with her finds. Others are starting to line up by the registers with their spoils, and the mood is utterly civilized again. Darwin would be proud.

12:45pm. We emerge into daylight, blinking. Some of the people around us have just started their day.

We go back to our apartment and nap.

There's a Chinese proverb that says 'Because men do not like the cold, Heaven does not cause winter to cease.'

It's barely winter yet, but for students like myself from warmer climates(I can't imagine anyone coming from a colder climate), the cold is as bad now as any winter should rightfully be. 

I can feel the cold seeping in through every nook and cranny, every chink in the armor I put on against it every time I go out. And to think it only gets worse from here!

Wikipedia says officially it's still fall, but then, Wikipedia should come spend a day on Mayflower Hill. Goodness knows it's cold enough already! 

It hit unexpectedly. I was sitting bleary-eyed on the T into Boston at 7:35 in the morning, mentally critiquing the poor design of my subway car. I thought to myself: The Paris métro car design was so much more effective than this.

I remembered, in a rush, my almost daily frequenting of the expansive French métro during my semester abroad; the quaint knobs you pulled to open the doors, the astonishing racial and economic diversity of its passengers, and those little folding seats, such a simple solution to common overcrowding. And then I frowned. What were those seats called again in French?

It ended with a –tin, I was sure. It was the type of vocabulary word that a non-native French speaker would never bother to remember – unless, of course, they took the métro almost every day for four months.

And just like that, cresting over my irritation at my own forgetfulness, it hit: an intense homesickness for Paris.

Back when I returned to the U.S. in December and people asked about my semester abroad, I replied with gushing adjectives and the conclusive phrase, “I miss it.” And I did, desperately. But it was easy to subdue in the novelty of a New England winter and reconnecting with friends and family, and later I just avoided looking too extensively at photographs or reminiscing to unwilling passerby. I think I knew that really thinking about Paris – about the lampposts, and the people queuing for fresh bread at the boulangerie, and the gray, murky color of the Seine – would just open a Pandora’s Box of pining.

This Parisian Pandora’s Box is, in fact, literally located in the depths of one of my closets, a suitcase that I stuffed with assorted reminders of life in Paris: ticket stubs, programs, maps, homework assignments, and much more. A sentimental packrat to the core, I couldn’t bear sorting through it all when I returned to the States. Yesterday, I opened the suitcase for the first time in seven months.

I took one look at the first layer and closed it again, but not before, as in the myth, unwanted feelings came flying up out at me. There, crowning the assortment of memorabilia, were my two copies of Paris Pratique, a comprehensive map book of Paris by neighborhood. I’d lovingly battered my first copy to the point that pages started falling out, hence its duplicate. 

Paris Pratique was constantly in my hand during my first month in Paris, as I navigated both the open boulevards and the cramped, winding streets that escaped Baron Haussmann’s razing. Later, it was curled up in my purse, a safeguard if I took a wrong turn, but also a smug sign that I didn’t need it anymore. I knew this city without a map. It had become home.

And so yesterday, I sat down cross-legged in front of the closed suitcase, took a deep breath, and pulled out Paris Pratique once more. The familiar, worn guide in my hands, I finally gave in to the yearning and remembered: Paris, overcast and mischievously windy, blowing my scarf around my face as I went on my daily walk around the city. There was always the unexpected on these strolls: here I discovered a little garden, wedged between apartment buildings, there an ancient church. I always got the feeling that old and new, history and present, weren’t differentiated the same way in Paris.

As I was sitting there, it came back to me, finally: strapontin, the French word for a folding seat. It was comforting to remember, and a much-needed reminder of all the visits I can plan and dream of. Yes, I miss Paris. And so, on my next visit, I will put on my walking shoes, unfold the strapontin, and go wherever the city takes me.