Ma famille, etc.

I realized that I never gave a full explanation or description of my host family, so now seems like as good a time as any:

My host mother is Janine. She is around 60 years old, and she has 4 grown children. Two of the girls live nearby in Paris (and one of them is the director of the housing agency that placed me), and one daughter and a son live in Toulouse. She also has three grandchildren: Pablo (8), Maya (7), and Simon (5). Pablo and Simon's families are the ones in Paris, whereas Maya normally lives in Toulouse. However, she is staying with her Ya-Ya for 2 weeks during the school holidays. By the way, all three kids are absolutely adorable. They can be a little difficult to understand at times -- children have higher voices and tend to mumble more -- but a lot of kid-oriented games and jokes transcend language and culture. (Side-note: I have now watched Pirates of the Caribbean, Ivanhoe, and Princess Bride in French. The kids particularly love Princess Bride, but the language is much stronger in the French voiceovers than in the English original! It took me by surprise.) Maya in particular is my buddy, and she likes to explain things to me. I think she gets a kick out of the fact that she can help a "grown up", haha.

Back to Janine, she is an interesting woman. She has been warm and friendly from the beginning, and she reminds me that I am to come and go as I please, but I am always welcome to join in family activities. On my first day here, she told me her life story. She was born in Fez, grew up in Morocco, married the editor of Maison Francaise (a prominent French magazine which appears to be something like our Better Homes and Gardens), and then proceded to live in Egypt, Washington, DC, Guatemala, and Switzerland for varying lengths of time. Somewhere along the way, she raised 4 children, and sometime in the not-too-distant past, her husband left her for a younger woman. She is now caring for her bed-ridden mother-in-law (who lives in the apartment but is not fully conscious), working in a dentist's office a few floors down, and pontificating on the virtues of the French Socialist party. Whew. What a woman.

Life is always interesting around here, and I am quickly feeling more and more at home. Even keeping up with the rapid-fire French that inevitably follows whenever people come over is getting much easier, although I still can't keep up to speed if and when I try to join in. Still, no one seems to mind. They are all very patient and continue to include me in the conversation. So take that, anyone who claims that Parisians are rude and snobby! Even my experience with waiters and store clerks has been a positive one so far.

A (hopefully) brief summary of the weekend:

On Friday, I went to dinner with some friends after class and then to the Louvre. It stays open late on Friday nights with free admission for students. I got to use my Sciences Po ID for the first time, which made me feel very official.

On Saturday, I met up with a few friends again to go exploring. We visited Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle and then walked around Ile de la Cite and Ile St-Louis, the two natural islands in the Seine. (In case anyone is interested, there is a third island, but it's artificial.) We then trekked back across town to Montmartre for dinner and a gorgeous sunset.

On Sunday, I had planned to go to church at the American Cathedral, apparently the go-to place for American ex-pats, but alas, I was thwarted by my methodology homework. My partner and I worked on our "expose", a specific type of oral presentation that is oh-so French, in the morning and finished just in time for my host family's Sunday lunch. And what a Sunday lunch it was. About 10 guests joined us for a meal that lasted, from aperitifs to dessert, a good 3.5 hours. We had olives and cheese, Greek moussaka (something that I can only describe as akin to eggplant lasagna), salad, bread and more cheese, two types of cake (chocolate and pineapple), and several types of wine. It was delicious.

I was adopted during the meal by a grandfatherly gentleman who was either Janine's brother or her daughter's father-in-law...I was never quite clear on that. However, in another example of how some things transcend cultural barriers, he very kindly took me under his wing and wanted to know all about my education (he was a student at Sciences Po himself, about 40 years ago). He also tried to teach me about French wine and cheese, but unfortunately the only thing that stuck is that one type of cheese, called Roquefort, has penicillin in it, and you're not allowed to bring it to the US. He informed me quite seriously that this makes it very good for one's health, though. After lunch, we all walked a few blocks to the Jardin du Luxembourg, and the kids played in the park for a bit. All in all, a lovely Parisian Sunday, and I hope to experience many more.

That brings us to today. My partner (a girl from McGill in Montreal) and I had to give our expose in class. The professor said that we did a great job on the presentation aspect of things -- I believe his words were, "this is what an expose is supposed to sound like." Go, us! -- but he had a few critiques regarding the organization of our content. (Side-note: Again, this is very French. It is also why I am taking a two week course solely devoted to "methodology". There are very specific expectations here regarding written and oral work. I might write a post about this later, once I've had more experience with it. On the other hand, that could very well be incredibly boring.) Oh, well. At least now I know so that next time, when I'm being graded, I can get everything right...theoretically. After class, we all went out to dinner with the professor, a tradition at Sciences Po. We went to a sushi restaurant, something I had never tried before, but to my slight surprise I really liked it. As with many things, if you think about it too much it's a little disgusting, but it certainly tastes good.

Now that I've written such a massive update, it is time for bed. Bonne nuit a tous!