loose ends

I know. You can't believe you're reading this. It feels like a lifetime since I have been active on this blog, and I hope you'll excuse my absence. I have been active in other ways since my return to the states almost three months ago - academically, socially, and physically. I'll try and update you on many things and articulate my being back at Stanford, as I finish up this blog for now. I mean, who knows when some more exploria-ing might need to happen and an older blog might need to be taken of that virtual shelf and wiped of its dust.

Coming back to school after a break, for most students, is a little rough. For me, having had a break that was essentially nine months, I feel as though it was probably a little rougher. Don't get me wrong - I did go to school and work fairly hard while I was abroad, it was just a different kind of work. It was taking three hours to read twelve pages in French or spending days working on presentations about spirituality in Germany. Suffice it to say, my transition back to Stanford was a bit shocking to my system. Suddenly there was 500 pages of reading and two response papers and a presentation and a research proposal, all for one of my five classes, in one week. Welcome back, Doria!!! There are a couple things that I did not expect to encounter upon my return. Such as an overwhelming feeling that I am no longer fully American. Now, I know that I am technically European (as I have my German passport), but it wasn't as if I got my passport in the mail and instantly felt European. It's more as if I don't feel fully American anymore, and there has been an obvious impact on my identity from the European countries where I've lived. It's an odd neither here-nor-there type of thing that has been interesting to navigate.
Luckily, being back with my amazing friends and wacky family has made up for my academic and personal disorientation. Hopefully, my grades won't be too horrifying and it will all be great come next Thursday, when I will be a senior in college. SO CRAZY.

My quarter has been extremely busy, even by my standards. For those of you who are curious, here's a bit of what I've been doing:

- Jew-ing! I was elected the President of the Jewish Student Association in April, and it's been a great quarter filled with joyous Shabbatot, interesting speakers, fun events, and a lot of meetings.
- Dancing! I've finally gotten back into shape, at least a little bit, in regard to dance - yay! There will be a lot more to come this summer and next year, but it's felt really good to be back in a studio.
- Researching! I'm currently working on developing a project that will hopefully take me back to France, which is about the encounter between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Strasbourg, France after the 1962 Algerian War.
- Chilling! I know that sounds, well, chill; however, there's a weird sense of urgency around summer vacation and graduation - so, I've gotta get in all the time with my senior friends as I can!
- Family-ing! I'm lucky to live near my school, and it's been really fun being back with my family. In the past few weeks, we've had three birthdays, two graduations (one in Rhode Island - fun!), and a couple holiday celebrations.

As school wraps up this week, I'm very much looking forward to the summer. I'll be working a few jobs including doing research for the Institute for Jewish Community Research, teaching cooking and nutrition classes to people in transitional housing with an organization called Collective Roots, coaching a youth swim team at the Pacific Athletic Club, and dancing and babysitting too :) Also looking forward to a lot of picnics and outings with friends and family alike.

I wanted to thank you all again for reading this blog and keeping in touch during this wonderful year. It meant so much to me to hear from you and reconnect with some of you who I had lost contact with years ago. I hope that you'll continue to update me on your lives and I look forward to sharing more journeys with you in the future. Wishing you all fantastic summers,

With love,
Doria

Maggid: the storytelling

Maybe all we humans, as a collective species, have ever really wanted is someone to hear our stories - to be validated and have our feelings, our prayers, and our dreams conveyed to someone/something and kept alive outside our own bodies. Every aspect of our lives involves recounting our experiences in one form or another, whether it's tweeting, using our personal experiences to formulate our opinions and tint our actions, or by calling up your best friend on the phone and telling her about your day. This week marks the holiday of Passover, during which the Jewish people retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. This Pesach, in addition to this 3,000 year old story, I also choose to tell a new one which I will share with you here. Two weeks ago, I (re)packed my bags and headed off to New Orleans for an Alternative Spring Break. As a full disclosure, I intend for this blog post to only be the beginning of my retelling, as there is no way that I could possibly say everything here, and I hope that you come away from this post with more questions than answers. All these stories are grossly over-simplified, but I hope you will forgive me and instead of brushing them off as inaccurate, you'll e-mail and ask me to clarify and specify further.

Characters:

-Ten Stanford Students and one Hillel at Stanford Staff

-Two amazing Progressive Jewish Alliance/Jewish Funds for Justice Staff Members

-One PhD student studying Anthropology (specifically Jewish Social Action groups in New Orleans)

-Matthew, homeowner in Back Pearl

-Tanya, community activist and Ninth Ward resident

-Slyvester, curator of the Backstreet Cultural Museum

-Charlotte, Natalia, and Shaena, advocates and staff at Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana

-Elderly woman, homeowner in Gentilly

-Matt, Jessica, Chad, and Felicia, Americorps staff at Rebuilding Together: New Orleans

-Letoya, bus driver extraordinaire

Excerpts:

...We all got off the bus and walked towards the Industrial Canal. To our left, we saw a wall that was probably about eight feet high. "That's the levee," Tanya told us, "it broke just down there," she says pointing a few hundred meters downstream. Tanya told us how her neighborhood was flooded by over eight feet of water and most of the homeowners in the Lower Ninth Ward remained without their homes for many months, if not years. The levees that were rebuilt by the Army Corps of Engineers are now meant to withhold storms up to a Category 2. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5. As we rode through her neighborhood, Tanya pointed out a set of shiny, perfectly white homes behind a fence across the street from her house. These were the military barracks, she explained. The army had spent millions of dollars building housing literally across the street from Tanya's home, but she was repeatedly caught up in bureaucratic red tape and told that insurance funds for her home rebuild were depleated.

...One day after working sorting lumber and other salvaged home parts, we heard a presentation from Charlotte, Shaena, and Natalia from JJPL. They shared with us their challenges, frustrations, and disappointments in terms of the Juvenile Justice System in Louisiana. From issues such as a very stable school-to-prison pipeline due to poor infrastructure and discriminatory legislation, to the lack of funds (and/or desire) to properly treat post-traumatic stress disorder in youth, to lack of community centers, to militarily-trained security guards being placed in elementary schools, the state of Louisiana seems to be in dire need of reform. A phrase of Shaena's has stuck with me since that day, "It is easier to go to jail as a young person from New Orleans than it is to go to school."

...As part of our work with Rebuilding Together, my friend Rebecca and I went out into the neighborhood to talk to people about the organization and see if they were eligible for rebuilding services. Although in a middle-class neighborhood, every fourth house or so was completely dilapidated. At one house, an elderly woman approached us on her porch. Becca and I talked to her for about 15 minutes, during which time we learned that she was either 87 or 89 years old and was born in New Orleans herself. Her daughter had just died of brain cancer and she was going to move into her grandson's home across Paris Avenue. This woman had bought her own home and told us many, many times that children were our greatest asset and she highlighted the importance of keeping our money away from our husbands - just in case. I remember thinking that whole day of how she is only a few years older than my grandmother and how incredible it is that their stories are so different. I am so sorry that we didn't catch this woman's name, because her advice to us was so interesting. While it might not be exactly relevant to my life today (for example, she mentioned that women couldn't have bank accounts without a husband), it was so touching that she shared part of herself with me and I'm so grateful that she did.

...Letoya's story came to us on the last day of the trip. During the storm, Letoya, then five-months pregnant, was with several of her family members in her grandmother's house. As the flood waters began to rise, Letoya tried to walk to high ground, but she and her family ended up surrounded by water, holding on to whatever they could to stay afloat. They made it to a neighbor's house where they waited for three days without food or water before being rescued. She and her family were then placed on a bus headed for Texas, and after more than six months, she could return to New Orleans with her healthy new son.

...Along with stories of unbelievable strength and survival, and constant challenges, and many sessions spent about addressing societal and sysematic issues not only in New Orleans, but all over the country, there were some stories of joy. The Shabbat I shared with my fellow Stanford Students and our staff was the most memorable I've had in recent memory. Our Shabbat Shira (song session) began on the bus going to services and ended long after Havdalah on Saturday night. It included a rain-soaked, impromptu hora, a sweet potato pie in the face, and beautiful thought-provoking discussions and study. Perhaps it was the physical work of the week that made the rest of Shabbat that much more sweet and whole, or it could have been that I was with an exceptional group of people going on an exceptional journey. Regardless, that Shabbat will stay in my mind for a while, and serve as a reminder of all the collective stories I heard and memories I created in New Orleans, and most importantly, my promise to continue to act against injustice in my community and to share all I've seen and heard with you.

B'shalom (in peace),

Doria

transitions

dear friends,

i am writing to you from stanford via new orleans, louisiana, dublin, ireland and san francisco, california (aka all the places i've been in the last two weeks). i was in new orleans on an alternative spring break program run through hillel at stanford, the progressive jewish alliance and the jewish funds for justice. and now that i'm back at school, i have tried really hard to come up with some kind of cohesive way to describe how i'm feeling at the moment, but the only word that seems appropriate is transition.

it was hard enough to come back to the states. i eased myself into that one quite well though, i think. i met my mom in ireland, which, as we know, is an english-speaking country but still in europe. that did not stop me from saying "merci" to the passport-control man in dublin and pretty much every waiter i've met since then. it was so nice to see my mom and have those few days with her alone. i think she secretly knew (as mothers always somehow do) that once i got back to california, i would be hit with a flurry of emails and interviews and other necessary things, so that downtime was very much appreciated. the weekend was lovely - it was st. patrick's day so there were a lot of festivities in which to partake :)

i am going to dedicate a post or two to my week in new orleans, so for now, i'll let you in on my california life since i've gotten back a few days ago. getting back to campus has been bittersweet. it has been a long few weeks and i think my exhaustion (both mental and physical) is weighing me down a bit. there are parts i like more than others - i'm slowly moving into my new room, meeting up with friends who i haven't seen all year, and watching the sunset over hoover tower while enjoying an elephant vanilla chai :) there is something, though, that i can't really pinpoint and has been getting me thinking lately. maybe it's the sense that i am somehow less independent now that i'm back on campus, or it might be the fact that i now actually have to respond to all the e-mails i had been able to just delete whilst abroad. it might be that discomfort that comes with having made a choice (for me, the choice was to stay in paris or return to stanford) and never really knowing whether that choice was right. i've been thinking a lot about paths and journeys lately, and i will sign off with a thought upon which i've been meditating...

i came back to school and found a letter from one of the wisest people i know and in it, she wrote "a path is correct for you if it is the one on which you make your way in truth" - here's to all of us living in truth with ourselves and those around us.

à bientôt

Dear Friends,

I've decided to take a break from packing up my room to share some of my reflections with you as I prepare to leave Paris tomorrow. This quarter has gone by so much faster than I could have imagined that it is quite literally incomprehensible that I have now finished my six months abroad, and that in two weeks I will be starting Spring quarter at Stanford.

My broader reflections will be posted soon enough, but I will say that I feel so incredible grateful to have been able to study here for the past three months and to have had all the experiences that I've been able to share with you, plus some extras on the side :) There are so many things that I will miss about Paris - the fact that I can't help smiling every time I see the Eiffel Tower, the food, speaking French, the art, the music, and the pace of life here. There are so many more things that I need some time to process, but for now I will give you a brief run-down of my day thus far in order to give you a hint of what I'm leaving behind:

Paris today was brilliantly sunny and around 75 degrees (farenheit), so when I woke up this morning, it was to some beautiful Parisian sunlight. After finishing my paper about Marc Chagall, I started packing and then headed out for the day. On my way to the Center, I stopped for a special breakfast - my favorite viennoisserie - pain au chocolat et amandes, which is essentially a chocolate croissant and an almond croissant mixed together. My metros were all on time and fully functioning today (the first time that's happened in about a week) and I got off a few stops early to take a walk to school. I printed out my papers, filled out my final evaluations, said au revoir to my professors and to those students who I won't see again before I leave. One of my favorite walks in Paris is from the Center to Odéon because I get to pass the Luxembourg Gardens, St. Sulpice Church, and many cute (although totally out of my price-range) stores. Today, for the first time that I've seen since I've arrived, the fountains at St. Sulpice were functioning and there were tons of people picnicking in the plaza. I made my way to my favorite fall-back cafe and had lunch with a glass of chilled rosé and people watched on the Blvd. St. Germain. After lunch, I took the bus to the American library to return my books and stopped in to read an actual, physical New York Times before heading home. Tonight will be my final dinner with my host family and a celebratory gathering with my friends.

I know that I will return to Paris sooner rather than later, but for now, I am glad that my final day here is one that encompassed so many things that I have loved about my stay here and that I have so much more to look forward to upon my return.

It just never gets old. View from the American Library.

winding down

Mes chers amis,

It's hard to believe that in a little over a week I will be back in San Francisco! On one hand, I am so excited to be heading back to you, my friends and family, to Stanford, and to California. It's funny, I guess, because while I think about returning to my "normal" life - something I haven't experienced in the last nine months - I can't really imagine it in the same way anymore. It seems as though my baseline for normal has shifted in some way, but I don't know how yet. On the other hand, I did not expect to have such a connection to Paris, and that has made it really hard to start winding down and getting ready to leave.

The past weeks have been busy, which is why this post is uncharacteristically late. In between finals, presentations, exams, tutorials, and dance classes, I've managed to have some fun as well :) There have been quite a few birthday celebrations, random escapades to different parts of the city, museum-hunting, coffee and pastry excursions, and, of course, a lot of wine and cheese.

On Friday, my Art History class went on an all-day field trip to Rouen, a town in Haute-Normandie (Upper Normandy), which is famous for a few things: the Cathedral, where Monet painted a series of 30 paintings of the facade; it is the location where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431; and, its dairy products - HELLA butter, yo. I had a lovely day, despite the fact that we had to be at the train station at 7:45 and I live about 40 minutes from the station. We had a guided visit of the town, which was very picturesque and quaint, wandered through the streets, and saw houses from the 15th century on the way to lunch. No big deal. Afterwards, we had a painting workshop, located in a studio just in front of the Cathedral, and we got a lesson in impressionist painting! Enjoyable, even though it was rather structured for an impressionist workshop. My masterpiece was accidentially forgotten in a cafe in Rouen, and it's probably better off that way. Let's just say painting is not my forte. Other than Rouen, the weekend was full of studying, friends, and walking. But mostly studying.

More after finals! Bisous!

Part of the Cathedral

Getting my Monet on!

Jeanne d'Arc statue in the St. Jeanne d'Arc church

T.H.I.S

For those of you unfamiliar with the acronym, the title of this blog post is "Thank HaShem [G-d] It's Shabbat!" and it seems particularly fitting, given my overall attitude last weekend. Here's the story:

I love Paris, in fact, it's in my top three favorite places in the whole world. It happens fairly regularly, though, that when I ask my friends what they envision my life to be like here they say something along the lines of "Well, you get up and look unimaginably chic. Then you stroll down the Champs Elysées munching a warm croissant on the way to class. You maybe study, but probably don't. Then, your host family feeds you an elaborate four-course dinner, you probably drink too much wine and then you go to a bar or go to bed. Right?" While parts of that description happen sometimes, none of those things have happened to me on the same day all at once. Ever.

I'm not here to complain about Paris itself - there are far too many things to praise than not, but my friends at home seem to overlook the fact that Paris is a big city and everything here requires effort and attentiveness. For example, my 40+ minute commute in the morning is not simply hopping in the car and plugging in the iPod; rather, it's being squished into a moving aluminum can next to probably 100 other people, having your personal space violated almost every day, keeping your personal belongings away from the pick pockets and knowing where you need to stand in the car to make your other two transfers in order to make it to class on time. Suffice it to say, I was getting tired.

So, I decided to take myself on a Shabbaton (definition: a weekend retreat focused on celebrating Shabbat) somewhere outside of Paris to reflect on my time abroad, which is coming to an end all too soon, to take a breath, to relax, to be on my own schedule, and to rest up for the upcoming finals and paper that begin next week. My destination? Brussels, Belgium! Mostly chosen for its convenient location and cheap train ticket prices, but exciting nonetheless!

I won't go into too much detail, but rest assured, I had a completely lovely weekend. Highlights included the Magritte Museum, the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts, checking out the Pierre Marcolini Chocolate workshop, long walks, reading for pleasure, and sleeping in. I was strangely surprised by a few things: the language (almost everything was written in four languages: Flemish, French, German, English), the lack of Belgian stuff (i.e., most foods, artists, etc. seemed to be stolen or borrowed from the French or Germans), and the friendliness of the people! Here are some photos to tide you over.

~D

I've actually never seen so many chocolate stores in one place.

Literally every other window in the whole city looked like this.

Belgian waffle in Belgium? Had to do it.

View from Kunstberg (Hill of the Arts)

Marat Assasiné, Jacques-Louis DAVID!! Musee des Beaux-Arts

What up, European Union!

la muse de paris

Historically and presently, Paris has served as a source of inspiration for musicians, chefs, authors, inventors, designers, and artists who traveled to, or worked in, this city for a variety of reasons - to feel liberated, to be freed from constraints placed upon them by their communities elsewhere, to mingle with their heros and mentors, to become famous ...

I am not here for any of the above reasons, per se. I guess, though, it's always rather liberating to be in a new place and fend for yourself through a series of adventures and mishaps that end up taking your life in a direction that you couldn't have previously imagined. However, there is something to be said about a city that is known to be the epicenter of creativity and art on the planet. What does that mean in my day to day life? Other than being extremely fortunate to see a lot of performance art in theaters, I see all kinds of musicians and artists doing there thing pretty much everywhere, including a seven-piece ensemble that plays every Thursday and Sunday in the Châtelet métro, which I see on my way to dance class.

Side note/rant: I personally, have two issues with the metro in terms of artistic promise. The first is that people seem to really not appreciate my tendency to tap-dance while waiting for the train to arrive. It's a habit that I picked up in New York a while back and haven't been able to shake. In fact (little known fact), I do this quite often - in grocery stores, waiting for friends to come out of a store... you get the idea. I'm not good at it, but it's something that helps me pass the time, but the Parisians are not taking it. No one has said anything to me outright, but the death glares are making me think that I should take up knitting or something. Secondly, everytime I enter the metro, I see choreography. It's a huge issue, people. Then I daydream about the kind of awesome site-specific dance piece I could create about the permeation of people on Line 9. I have a bunch of ideas and I hope that some of you will volunteer to help me out with a little project I want to do on BART when I get back to the Bay :)

Yes, I know, the cliché is that art is everywhere, but here formal art (aka not street art or beautiful formations of children in line waiting for their croissants) is literally everywhere. On almost any corner you can see signs pointing to a variety of tiny museums that no one knows existed because it's around the corner and to the left of the Louvre. For example, my goal this week is to head to the Musée du Luxembourg, which is very near my school, but I haven't gone because it's not a "major" site and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

More fun art: While walking down the street yesterday, I found that it had rained letters!

Other than artistic explorations, this week involved heading to the Catacombes, which is basically a place several tens of meters underground connected by an complex tunnel system that holds an ossuarie. Essentially, in the mid 1800s, the city decided to expand and build housing, so they built over the cemetaries; however, in order to preserve the notion of the sacred state of the dead, they moved all the bones from all these cemetaries into the Catacombes. It was more that a little disturbing, but at the same time very fascinating. It looked like this:

Those would be bones and skulls.

The tunnel leading to the "L'Empire de la Mort" (Empire of Death)

This week, the agenda will include Père Lachaise cemetary where Proust, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are buried; a wine bar excursion; writing a French paper and starting an Art History paper; fancy dinner; stroll through the Bois de Boulogne (giant park); yoga!

À bientôt!

la vie continue...

Mes chers amis,

Can you believe I've been in Paris for seven weeks already? I can't either. My whole relationship with time has shifted dramatically over the past few weeks because, while there is a deliberately relaxed speed with which Parisians pass their days - i.e., deliberately enjoying a two-hour lunch or deliberately spending a few hours or the whole day in the Musée d'Orsay - at the same time, Paris does not slow down. Especially for things of such a trivial nature as midterms. For instance, our second Bing (Mr. and Mrs. Bing, thank you!) cultural event was nowhere other than the infamous Paris Opera. We enjoyed a wonderful performance of the French classic, "Manon Lescaut" which ran from 7:30 - 11pm the night before the midterm in Art History, a class in which 20/34 of the students here are enrolled. Let's just say, it was not my greatest exam for many reasons (such as little sleep due to the Opera and, oh yeah, the fact that it was a timed exam on slide identification of 17th and 18th century paintings. IN FRENCH).

I hope that it will be sufficient to say that I have not been bored for one day since I've arrived, which, if you know me well, is no small feat. During the week, I'm pretty busy with classes -- I'm taking French, Art History, France in World War II (a history class), Hebrew, Dance, and I'm teaching an English workshop at a French elemetary school. So, with all of that plus my elongated dinners with my host family and Skype dates with my dogs, it's pretty packed M-Th. Fridays, I've been going on field trips with Stanford during the day to such places as a chocolatier and the French Institute of Fashion (Institut Francais de la Mode), and walking around and exploring different neighborhoods. In the evenings and on weekends, I've been museum-hopping, finding awesome excursions such as visiting the Grand Mosque of Paris, finding great cafes and crepes, and seeing a lot of performances. In the past two weeks, I've seen "Manon" at the Opera, "The Rodin Project," a modern dance piece inspired by Rodin's watercolors, "Danse Libres," a very post-modern performance that involved a lot of nude people and live sheep on stage, and "La Dame aux Camelias," a theater piece directed by a very controversial German dramatist. It's pretty surreal and a little overwhelming at times, but it would be a lie to say that I'm not absolutely loving it.

Before I get to the pictures, here are some interesting cultural tidbits I've discovered:

• There is no word for "cheap" in French. The way you say "cheap" is by saying that something is not very expensive. Hmmmm, indicative of my current shopping frustrations? Yes.
• A statistic I came across in a class the other day was that the average French person consumes the equivalent of 173 bottles of wine's worth of alcohol per year. And yet, the only people who I see drunk at bars are the Americans...no wonder we have such a great reputation abroad.
• Baguettes, or "La Tradition" as they are called, have a price that is regulated by the government, which I think is totally awesome! For 90 centimes (cents) you can buy a baguette at ANY boulangerie! What a steal :)

Below are some photos of the past few weeks:

My walk at dusk last Sunday. Hôtel de Ville (4e)

Voltaire's tomb, Panthéon (5e)

View of Paris from the 5th floor of the Musée nationale d'art moderne. Centre Georges Pompidou (4e)

Words to the wise, Shakespeare and Company Bookstore (5e)

Yes, that is a nude, green man and a nude, red woman and live sheep. Danse Libres, Centre Pompidou (4e)

Handwashing station at a bakery in the Jewish Quarter. Boulangerie Finkelstejn, Marais (3e)

gastronomie

Yes, I know, I said that I would blog about my weekend in Charente, but today I went to a Salon de Mer et Vigne, which is essentially a gigantic, beautiful, national farmer's market focusing on products from the sea and from the vine. Hence, I was inspired.

For your pleasure, here are some pictures of my gastronomic escapades over the past five weeks. I would imagine you will notice, as I have in a very real way, that Paris is no place for a diet.

Falafel better than 88-95% of the ones I've had in Israel ~ Chez Hanna (3e)

Assortment of Macarons ~ Ladurée (8e)

Tacos and Cerveza! ~ Candelaria (3e)

Millefeuille of red beets, crab and tuna ~ random restaurant, Angôuleme, France

Poached halibut with citrus cream and roasted vegetables ~ random restaurant, Angôuleme, France

horrible photo, but this is the paella man ~ marché Hôtel de Ville (4e)

school-sponsored chocolate tasting ~ chocolatier servant (16e)

gallette complete d'oignon with cider from brittany ~ Breizh Cafe (4e)

petite galletes (butter cookies) and merangues ~ salon de mer et vigne (bois de vincennes)

moroccan sweet mint tea ~ salon du thé at the grand mosque of paris (5e)

devenir (v.) ~ "to become"

When asked at our orientation session our goals for our stay in Paris, the majority of the students in my program replied with some variation of "to appreciate life like the Parisians," "to eat great food," "to live in a world of art and culture," and "to become French." While I cannot attest to the reasoning behind these statements, I would imagine that this desire to transform into someone who is more cultured, has better taste, speaks perfect French, and has can appreciate a life and a pace that is plus décontractés (more relaxed) is something that all of us here dream about at night. It's one thing to be an American with pretty good French who lives in Paris, but it is another to take the risks involved, to be vulnerable enough to try to really become French.

Funnily enough, the second that you set foot on French soil, your nose does not turn up in the air to look down upon others, you do not immediately begin to think existential and philosophical thoughts, and you do not begin smoking. At least that was not my experience. It seems, though, that there are certain things that I've been able to pick up upon that have helped to blur that distinction between obvious "guidebook and camera schlepping, tennis shoe wearing, English speaking, Starbucks drinking" American and les vrais Parisiens. The following are some examples:

• I'm working on learning the abbreviations and special names for things in French. For example, when ordering water in a restaurant they might ask you whether you will accept San P (pronounced sahn-pay). If you are thinking about what that could possible mean, as I was the first five times I heard this at a restaurant, fear not! I am here to inform you that this is the cute name the French have given to San Pellegrino sparkling water! Why don't they serve the french Perrier? Good question.

• Drinking coffee at all hours of the day and night is very common and perfectly acceptable here, which is wonderful for students like myself. Unless you want to drink your coffee at the same time as your meal, which is somehow impossible. I wanted to drink some coffee whilst eating lunch one day and despite my lengthy conversation with the waiter about how I really did, in fact, want the coffee at the same time as my food, it was brought out about 20 minutes after I finished. Moral of this story: coffee and food together after breakfast? Quel horreur!

• As difficult as this may seem to my peace-loving California compadres, I have now solidified my belief that one cannot classify his/herself as Parisian without elbowing someone out of the way to get a seat on the Métro. I realized, when I felt a jabbing pain in my rib and looked to see a woman of about 75 running past me, that in this realm I must have no mercy. It's a rough world out there, folks.

Although it's difficult and I know that, if I'm lucky, it will take a lifetime to live the real vie parisienne, but I do find that each day I learn something new and it gets a little easier to understand the people, the culture and the mentality that makes up this crazy, wonderful city. I'll post soon about my weekend in the Charente region of France - three days full of beautiful countryside, a comic-book festival, Roman ruins, lots of cathedrals, and a whole lot of Cognac :)

the wonders never cease...

Sacre Coeur Basilica, Montmartre

A few weeks back when I was in San Francisco, I went to an exhibit on Harry Houdini, the tagline of which was one of his quotes reading, "Will the wonders never cease?" I recall thinking that it was a bit idyllic and perhaps naive, but I am beginning to feel more and more as though Houdini had it right. I had quite a week, filled with a lot of wonderful things and some less wonderful ones too, and my thoughts always drifted back to Mr. Houdini reminding me to look at every moment with awe and thanks.

Because it is late here, I will be brief and I hope that you'll accept my apologies and promise for a longer post later. Highlights of the past week:

~ Had my first Art History class at the Louvre. I have never taken Art History before, but I feel particularly grateful to not have a textbook because, after discussing "The Coronation of Napoleon" by Jacques-Louis David in class on Tuesday, we went and SAW it on Wednesday. Crazy?? Yes.

~ I fell in love with Monet again on Friday, and all of the impressionists we saw at our visit to the Musee d'Orsay with my "Intro to French Society" class. Also saw the Stein Family collection of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso at the Grand Palais :)

~Explored a new neighborhood, Montmartre, with my friend from home, Nora. N and I danced together from ages 8-18 and she is now studying in Paris too! I am excited that we willbe able to have many more adventures together this quarter! We found a really cool antique store, great restaurants and shops, a Breton parade, lots of street art, and, of course, Sacre Coeur!

~Went to a cupcake and champagne fête hosted by my Stanford mentor, who is an alum living in Paris with his wife and they are awesome! And they have a house in the Marais, which is the neighborhood where I will have a pied à terre one day.

~ Went to a cooking workshop at the Maison de la Culture Yiddish, where I learned to make Ashkenazi cheesecake and pareve sponge cake. The cakes were fine, but the most awesome thing was that I got to tour their archives - the largest in Western Europe - which are full of Yiddish periodicals, books in French, English and Yiddish, and tons of other really, really cool things for nerds like myself.

When I finally returned home Sunday night after a weekend of running around, I had one of my many "What is this life?" moments and recounted all of the exciting things that had happened in the last week. The fact that I am still stressed about my summer plans, that my college graduation is approaching and I have no clue what I might want to do after June 2013, do not seem as big a deal. For now, I am trying very hard to just be (present tense, not future). Because, in fact, I am perfectly content to sit at the Boulevard St. Germain and take comfort in the fact that there will still be wonderful things ahead.

p.s - I have determined that it would be actually possible for me to live in Paris because I could satiate my need for delicioso Mexican food. The photo above is courtesy of my evening with Nora where we each had two tacos, guacamole, an amazing black bean brownie (yes, you read that correctly - flourless, but made with black beans), and some beverages - mine happened to be made with chile-infused tequila... mmm caliente! Viva Paris :)

Things are looking familiar...

It's now been about a week and a half since the journey from San Francisco to Paris, and I am pleased to report that France has decided to help my transition by displaying a bit of California sunshine this past week. I now have a routine, which has allowed me to begin to really explore and become familiar with the city, my classes, the people, and myself.

Orientation continued throughout the past week, and we also began classes on Tuesday. As previously mentioned, all our classes are in French, which is both completely overwhelming and totally gratifying. Our professors know we're only catching between 40-85% of what they're saying (depending on the speed with which they talk, whether the material is familiar or not, etc.), but even so it's been a fascinating challenge. I decided to drop the African Francophone literature class in favor of Art History. My uncle, who is an Art History professor, has been on my case to take art history at Stanford in my "free time," and I figured that there is no better place to do so than Paris. Have I mentioned that we meet once a week in class and the other meeting is at museums (read: I have class in the Louvre)? Yeah. Best decision I have made in Paris thus far.

Other than school, this week was a full one. We had our first language partner meeting with the French engineering students, which was really interesting and fun. My partner enjoys cooking and going to the theatre (yay!) so hopefully we'll be doing some of those things together. I took my first dance class in Paris! It's located in a truly amazing complex of over 8 studios (unheard of in terms of space in this city) and the teacher was really nice. It wasn't quite my level, but we'll see how things work out. Culinary discovery of the week: tigré noir. This is some kind of almond cake thing with dark chocolate on top. YUM.

This weekend was awesome and included our Bing luncheon (fancy food paid for by Stanford); an epic music-sharing session with my host mother, who happens to love Israeli musicians; a friend's 21st bday celebration (although we're in France, so 21 ain't no big thing); a day trip with some new Stanford friends to Versailles, featuring Louis XV's private apartments and Marie-Antoinette's hamlet; my first foray into French cinemas with an amazing film Les Intouchables; and a performance called "Gala des Étoiles du 21e siècle" aka "Ballet Stars of the 21st Century", which featured two principals from 8 major European ballet companies and was incredible. Basically a perfect Parisian weekend.

The view after stepping out of the theater this evening.

Hall of Mirrors, Versailles

The following are some cultural oddities differences, observations, and questions that I've accumulated thus far...

- In a country where smoking is the national sport, it's a true miracle how Parisians are able to walk as much as they do without wheezing and keeling over.

-You do not see Parisians walking and eating at the same time. As one who is usually all about efficiency (indeed, I can eat a burrito with one hand while driving on 280 to make a class and/or meeting), it is interesting that despite the amount of foods that could be easily consumed while walking (le sandwich, le crêpe, le croissant, les macarons) it's simply not done. This is different from Berlin where it seemed like no one actually sat down to eat; rather, they'd prefer a Döner and Bier on the U-Bahn. I am going to try to be somewhere in the middle - I don't have time to have 1.5 hour lunches and dinners, but I will try to have a little more respect for the tradition of the meal, as our Center director likes to say.

-How is everyone so fucking chic?

-Smiling in public is prohibited. Ok, not really, but should you be a female and riding on the metro, you should not smile at the people near you, as one might do in the United States to signal some sense of humanity. According to our director, Estelle (who is awesome, btw), unless you are interested in sexual advances from total strangers including the question "Chez moi ou chez vous?" (my house or yours?), you should not be friendly to people you don't know. For all of you who are curious, I have not been in such a situation, but it comes from a Stanford in Paris student from last quarter. Moral of the story: keep the smiles for those whom you know and deserve such beauty.

-Paris should be learned by walking. Unlike Berlin, which is so vast that walking anywhere but to your U-Bahn stop makes no sense, Paris was made for pedestrians. Every arrondissement is so full of unique and interesting shops, people, parks, and stories, that it would be a total shame to only take the Metro. So I've learned, walk whenever possible and you'll always find something new and exciting.

On the agenda for this week: beginning my English workshop at the local elementary school, a soirée with Stanford alumni living in Paris, writing my first report in French for anything other than a language class, trying out a new dance class, working in a new cafe :)

À Bientôt!

Bienvenue à Paris

Bonjour mes amis,

Upon my arrival at our orientation session last Friday, I was not really feeling this whole Paris thing. It was really difficult for me to leave San Francisco on Thursday - I was just getting back into the swing of California life, I was feeling productive and I still hadn't seen all the people who I meant to visit over break. Add these emotions to the desire to head back to campus in Palo Alto and to have another week of winter break, in addition to my lack of sleep and desparate need of a shower/change of clothes after being on the plane, we can all agree that I was not in the best of moods when I landed at Charles de Gaulle.

I arrived at the hostel where we all were staying for our first night in France and took a walk to try and stay awake as long as possible. Then I saw this:

It's fair to say that I snapped out of my bad mood quickly and have been loving getting reacquainted with Paris. I can't wait to revisit my favorite places and discover new treasures that are around every corner. Here's the low-down on my life here so far...

Ma famille d'accueil (lit. welcoming families, colloq. host families)

As in Berlin, here I am staying with a host family. I live dans la petite ceinture (the little belt), meaning the area just outside of Paris proper, but within a 15 minute ride on the Paris Metro to the Champs Elysees. One advantage of being in the 'burbs is that I live in an actual house, with an actual garden and real space, which is very rare in the City. Unlike in Berlin, though, here we eat all of our breakfasts and 5 dinners a week with our families. My host mother is fantastic and I'm already very much enjoying our mealtime conversations, despite the fact that we speak solely in French. Usually, we communicate very well, but when the discussions turn to subjects like Obamacare (my thoughts on which I can barely express in English), it's difficult to fight the urge to bring a dictionary to the table. My family consists of my host mother, her partner, David, and David's daughter (age 11). Did I mention that David was a professional chef in a restaurant très chic in Paris? Awww yeah.

Mes cours et mes études (classes and studies)

Stanford in Paris is located in the building of the Institut Superieur d'Electronique de Paris (ISEP) in the 6th arrondissement (district). We have a relationship with ISEP both in terms of classes and relating to "cultural affairs," meaning that we can register for certain seminars at ISEP and that we have French students who are our language partners! This also means that I am actually a French student (with a French student idenitification card), which apparently is extremely helpful when trying to get into the Louvre for free :) Classes begin tomorrow and I am trying not to freak out because, also unlike Berlin, all my classes will be taught in French. The following classes are on the agenda for this quarter:

-French Language (duh)

-France in World War II (you'd think I'd know enough about WWII by now, but you'd be wrong)

-Contemporary African Literature in French or Human Rights in the Comparative Perspective

-Introduction de la Société Francaise: basically a field trip class on Fridays when we tour museums, participate in Chocolate and Boulangerie tastings, have on-site lectures by professors at historical buildings, etc. Awesome (x 50).

-Le stage en milieu scolaire - an internship at French elementary school. I will be leading an atelier en Anglais (English language workshop) at a public elementary school in the 16th arrondissement :)

It seems like a lot, and there is definitely the possibility of dropping a class, but for now I'll give it a go!

La Vie Parisienne

It's so surreal to be here in Paris that I think it will take another week or so to sink in - after all, I was in Berlin and California in the past month and the brain and the emotions are a bit strained. We'll see how I feel in nine weeks, but for now I love the smells of the boulangeries, the fact that I can't help but smile every time I see the Eiffel tower, the ability to just walk and wander and still find amazingly beautiful things everywhere, the three-course (hour-long) dinners with my host family, and the slower pace of life here in general. The language is difficult, absolutely, but I hope that it will all be worth it when I am able to speak confidently with my new French friends. For now, I will just say that I am beyond excited to be here and I can't wait to experience all that the city and this quarter has to offer.

À bientôt,

Doria