Soooooo I am too exhausted for my own good.... I still haven't figured out if it's the fact that I am running up and down metro stairs all day long of if it's the stress of not doing everything that I want to do. Maybe both.... who knows?
The fact is I am constantly tired yet I am never resting. If I am out for some reason and someone proposes something else to do, I'll do it. Without thinking twice. It is not my classes... they are not very demanding, at least for now. It's just this fact that I am staying only three months in Paris and have so, so much to do!
The wine class well, I started yesterday. It seemed quite entertaining to me... well not the beginning, in which our American teacher discussed the chemical properties of the grape, but the later part... in which we actually did tasting! Why am I in this class? No really, the teacher asked me as I clumsily walked in the door ten minutes late. My answer?
"I dont know anything about wine!" and it's true. Please praise me for my honesty because I can say that I have been in Paris for more than a month now, have drunk enough wine, but absolutely never know what I am drinking or how to choose it. It is more of a random luck thing, if the wine turns up to be decent or disgusting.
So we tried two white wines and two red. I felt somehow awkward, because everyone was helping to describe the taste of this wine (which of course you have to sip in a fish-like manner and then spit out in a cow-like one) as fruity, ashy, some people felt the cherries, the raspberries, the cinnamon, the spices, all of this in... fermented grape! Now I knew what they meant when they said acidic, or dry, strong and fruity... but the finding of other fruits in this one seems like a stretch to me. It was here when I simply swallowed the wine.
But no... I spat enough out to assure I wouldn't be drunk in class! It was quite fantastic and then four of us decided to go have dinner close by, in front of a magnificent church which we couldn't quite define what architectural period it had been built on, (Trying to apply my architectural history of Paris class-skills people), to try our new wine tasking skills.
Fun.
Tonight, Fables de La Fontaine at the Comedie Francaise.... I'll let you know how that goes.
Au revoir mes amis... Paris est vraiment fantastique!!!!!!!
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007
Cambridge... or Harry Potter... who knows?
Ok so I know I still haven't written from Paris... the reason for this is pretty obvious, you saw, the last entry I left blank... not on purpose really, simply because my feelings about my experience are so blurry an intangible, such an indescribable mix, that nothing but a blank screen is what results of my futile attempts to write... it has been a month... a month of exhaustion... in every way.. good and bad, just nothing and everything like I had imagined. Just a sad realization that 3 months is too awkward of a time lapse to stay in a place, anywhere, let alone Paris.
But this entry shall be about Cambridge... why? Well cause I am in it right now, it seems appropriate, and for some reason when I actually travel and not stay long in a place I can better look at it with some sort of perspective.
Why am I here? I mean I can guess what you are thinking, so many amazing , huge cities, so much to see and do in Europe, why the hell Cambridge?
I can start by saying Zhiping. This is a fantastic girl I met in Cannes, she is a 20-year-old Singaporean and just finished her law degree here, in Cambridge. Now she is taking a sabbatical, by doing a masters degree in social anthropology! Not dumb this girl... but the thing is she also seems to share this love of everything that I have for life: this curiosity and need to know things, and to love history and art and music... everything! We are very similar, and that is why with only two weeks of knowing her I still felt comfortable with coming and visiting, after she had invited me of course.
I got here on Halloween but felt so exhausted after the plane, and three-hour bus ride that we simply went to bed. It was yesterday that she took me around this amazing university, and I got a gist of how it works...
You belong to a college, but it had nothing to do with what you are studying. Cambridge is pretty much a huge congregation of 30 colleges, and your admission decision lays in the hands of only that college. There is no applying to one, getting rejected and then trying for another.
We walked along all the most famous colleges, some of them known for their "poshness" like Trinity, others for their leftist ways (like Kings). Well the history if the College you can actually find in Wikipidia, probably with better accuracy than me. So go ahead and do that, while I go back to talking about my trip.
Ok!!! I have to tell you about the lawn!!! Each college is pretty much set-up around a courtyard, with a perfect clean-cut grass that maintains its state of purity by being off limits to students. Only "fellows" (which means professors as far as I understood) can step on this grass and cut diagonally through the college. All the rest are bound to watch them do it, and cry internally.... this is one of the many crazy traditions that in the end make the whole Cambridge experience something taken out of another century.
The formal dinner! Once a week your college will have a formal, in the huge, old dinning hall that all of them have. High ceilings, thick wooden doors, absurdly large tables. These kids dress up (dresses for girls, suits and ties for boys) wear a gown on top, and look fabulous once a week to sit down and have a three course meal. Since Zhipping is a graduate student I got to sit in one of the first two tables, close to the mistress (the dean, sort of) who gives a speech in Latin before a gong sounds and everyone starts to eat. Pretty fantastic.
The Orchard! We walked around 45 minutes through long grass and angry cows to get to this place. It is a sort of teahouse with its many tables all placed outside in an orchard. This is where Rupert Brooke, Virginia Wolf, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes amongst many others sat down to drink tea, converse and write poetry.
Rupert Brooke:
"If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England."
But this entry shall be about Cambridge... why? Well cause I am in it right now, it seems appropriate, and for some reason when I actually travel and not stay long in a place I can better look at it with some sort of perspective.
Why am I here? I mean I can guess what you are thinking, so many amazing , huge cities, so much to see and do in Europe, why the hell Cambridge?
I can start by saying Zhiping. This is a fantastic girl I met in Cannes, she is a 20-year-old Singaporean and just finished her law degree here, in Cambridge. Now she is taking a sabbatical, by doing a masters degree in social anthropology! Not dumb this girl... but the thing is she also seems to share this love of everything that I have for life: this curiosity and need to know things, and to love history and art and music... everything! We are very similar, and that is why with only two weeks of knowing her I still felt comfortable with coming and visiting, after she had invited me of course.
I got here on Halloween but felt so exhausted after the plane, and three-hour bus ride that we simply went to bed. It was yesterday that she took me around this amazing university, and I got a gist of how it works...
You belong to a college, but it had nothing to do with what you are studying. Cambridge is pretty much a huge congregation of 30 colleges, and your admission decision lays in the hands of only that college. There is no applying to one, getting rejected and then trying for another.
We walked along all the most famous colleges, some of them known for their "poshness" like Trinity, others for their leftist ways (like Kings). Well the history if the College you can actually find in Wikipidia, probably with better accuracy than me. So go ahead and do that, while I go back to talking about my trip.
Ok!!! I have to tell you about the lawn!!! Each college is pretty much set-up around a courtyard, with a perfect clean-cut grass that maintains its state of purity by being off limits to students. Only "fellows" (which means professors as far as I understood) can step on this grass and cut diagonally through the college. All the rest are bound to watch them do it, and cry internally.... this is one of the many crazy traditions that in the end make the whole Cambridge experience something taken out of another century.
The formal dinner! Once a week your college will have a formal, in the huge, old dinning hall that all of them have. High ceilings, thick wooden doors, absurdly large tables. These kids dress up (dresses for girls, suits and ties for boys) wear a gown on top, and look fabulous once a week to sit down and have a three course meal. Since Zhipping is a graduate student I got to sit in one of the first two tables, close to the mistress (the dean, sort of) who gives a speech in Latin before a gong sounds and everyone starts to eat. Pretty fantastic.
The Orchard! We walked around 45 minutes through long grass and angry cows to get to this place. It is a sort of teahouse with its many tables all placed outside in an orchard. This is where Rupert Brooke, Virginia Wolf, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes amongst many others sat down to drink tea, converse and write poetry.
Rupert Brooke:
"If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England."
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