Hey everyone! This is going to be really short, because a) internet is very expensive in Geneva, b) the keyboard layout is once again different (seems like every European country makes up its own keyboard), and c) I have to catch my flight to Amsterdam in a few hours and I still haven't packed =)
So, we spent the last few days on the shore of Lake Geneva (in French it's called Lac Léman, I don't get why there's such a discrepancy). To all of those who care, this is the lake that inspired the song "Smoke on the Water". Anyways, I'm proud to say that I spent more money on museums and guided visits than I did on food! The Swiss really seem to be all about world peace and universal friendship. Geneva harbors the second largest United nation complex and the Red Cross headquarters, the nearby city of Lausanne that we also visited happens to be the Olympic capital of the world, and I'm not even talking about the Geneva convention (by the way, we took pictures in front of the room where it was signed). It is also the cleanest large city I've ever seen, with a beautifully developed public transport network that is completely free for all tourists. Basically, it's a country of hard-working hippies. That is not to say that it is absolutely perfect, of course - I would appreciate food being not as expensive, for example (the only really really cheap thing is chocolate. Swiss chocolate.)
This is terrible, I wish i had more time to write about all of the super-interesting stuff that happened, but time is running short, I guess I'll update this when i get to Nice and upload all the pictures. Or, rather, not all, but at least a selection of the over 200 I took so far. What else is crucially important? Oh yes, we went to CERN, the huge European nuclear research center! They have a cool museum where you can stand inside a replica of the Large Hadron Collider tunnel and look at the ORIGINAL paper by a CERN engineer that first presented the idea of the World Wide Web. On the top of the paper, you can see the guy's boss' famous resolution: "Vague, but intriguing". This was less than 30 years ago.
We also visited the enormous Patek Philippe museum (that's a famous watchmaking company) and saw the most complicated mechanical watch in the world which adjusts automatically for not only leap years, but also the few skipped seconds that accumulate despite leap years... This thing took 5 years to design and build, too bad it's not really needed anymore - with electronic watches, you can just write a short algorithm that will do this... And, finally, we stopped by the houses of the mortal enemies Rousseau and Voltaire, the fathers of Western democracy and modern theatre.
OK, well the computer's warning me that time is almost up and I'm about to get kicked off... =( I'll write again when there's a chance! Miss you all!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Weekend of Two Cities
So, this last weekend I took full advantage of the 1-Euro bus service in the region and went to two very different places, Grasse on Saturday and Monaco/Monte-Carlo on Sunday.
For all you uneducated people out there (don't worry, I didn't know this myself until I went there), the little and unnoticeable town of Grasse has maintained, for centuries, the status of the perfume capital of the world. At first sight, there is nothing special about it: no huge cathedral in the middle, no especially picturesque houses clinging to steep cliffs, no secret mountain lake... But, walking through the 'downtown', famous names immediately catch your attention: Molinard, Galinard, and Fragonard are all based here, offering free visits of their still-working perfume factories that bring in over 600,000,000 euros a year. In fact, two-thirds of France's natural aromas are produced in this little town that hides its immense wealth behind old and battered building façades.
We walked into the Fragonard factory - not because we had any special preferences, but just because they happened the first parfumerie that we noticed. The free guided visit exceeded any and all of my expectations. The lady was unbelievably nice and knew all there is to know about the workings of a perfume factory. She explained to us the specifics of hot grease extraction - when heaps of flowers are thrown into a cauldron of melted animal fat and stirred until the fat absorbes all the odor - and cold grease extraction, used for flowers so fragile that they lose their scent immediately upon contact with hot fat, which involves sticking the flowers to a layer of spread-out cold fat and waiting for the fat to slowly absorb the odorant molecules. She showed us the room with containers holding thousands of liters of some of the world's most expensive perfumes - did you know that, to make one liter of the "essence" of a particular flower, you need to collect between two and three thousand pounds of petals? We also got to see the room where the soap is being made (and the only room where I managed to take some photos when the guide turned away, as photography is STRICTLY forbidden - take a look on Picasa!) and, finally, the laboratory. This is where the "nose" works (that's really what they call them), sitting in front of an "organ" of smells. The organ consists of countless tiny bottles and flasks, arranged in many rows, containing all or almost all distinct smells used in perfume production, and a large mixing flask in the middle.
The guide told us about the education required to become a nose. There are only three schools in the entire world: one in Grasse, one in Paris, and one somewhere in Switzerland. The exam that you have to pass at the end requires you to be able to distinguish and name over 500 different smells, as well as be capable of smelling a complex perfume and breaking it down into the individual components. At the end of the tour, the guide let us smell samples of some of the perfumes currently on sale in their store and challenged us to guess what components were present in them. An average perfume that you buy in the store is composed of 25 to 250 different individual scents (about 150 on average), but picking up even the basic and most prominent ones is harder than it seems. I succeeded at finding vanilla in one of the samples and lemon in another, but that was about it... If you're at all interested in all of this, you should absolutely read the book "Perfume" by Patrick Süskind - it's way too freaky and crazy, but definitely a worthwhile read.
Oh, and Grasse is also full of cats of all breeds and sizes. It's a random observation, but you really can't help noticing all the felines... They're everywhere. One even attacked us and chased us away from the town hall - I don't know if he was trained to do that, or if he just happened to find our company too unpleasant.
The Principality of Monaco that we visited on Sunday yielded somewhat fewer memories, but was still worth the bus ride. It's a tiny little sovereign state surrounded by France and the Mediterranean, with a prince from the Grimaldi royal family which has ruled the principality since 1297. Monaco collects very few taxes, and so millionaires from all over Europe buy apartments in the high-rise buildings and declare them as their primary residences, thus evading the taxes they would have had to pay in the country where they actually live. Most of the millionaires don't really spend too much of their time there, and the people on the streets are generally tourists. You do see the occasional Ferrari or Jaguar driving up to a house, though, so I guess the millionaires do come every once in a while to pay their bills and do some cleaning in the near-empty flats. Monte-Carlo was a little disappointing, with a single casino that was very low-key and discreet - nothing on the scale of Las Vegas or even Altlantic City. We didn't even go in because the casino charges 10 euros just for entering the premises.
I'm leaving to Geneva in two days! Had to struggle through about 20 minutes of panic today when I realized that Switzerland is not a Schengen country (I only have a Schengen visa), but then it turned out that they do not require a visa from U.S. citizens OR Green Card holders, whew!
I guess the next post will be describing Amsterdam and Geneva adventures... See you later!
For all you uneducated people out there (don't worry, I didn't know this myself until I went there), the little and unnoticeable town of Grasse has maintained, for centuries, the status of the perfume capital of the world. At first sight, there is nothing special about it: no huge cathedral in the middle, no especially picturesque houses clinging to steep cliffs, no secret mountain lake... But, walking through the 'downtown', famous names immediately catch your attention: Molinard, Galinard, and Fragonard are all based here, offering free visits of their still-working perfume factories that bring in over 600,000,000 euros a year. In fact, two-thirds of France's natural aromas are produced in this little town that hides its immense wealth behind old and battered building façades.
We walked into the Fragonard factory - not because we had any special preferences, but just because they happened the first parfumerie that we noticed. The free guided visit exceeded any and all of my expectations. The lady was unbelievably nice and knew all there is to know about the workings of a perfume factory. She explained to us the specifics of hot grease extraction - when heaps of flowers are thrown into a cauldron of melted animal fat and stirred until the fat absorbes all the odor - and cold grease extraction, used for flowers so fragile that they lose their scent immediately upon contact with hot fat, which involves sticking the flowers to a layer of spread-out cold fat and waiting for the fat to slowly absorb the odorant molecules. She showed us the room with containers holding thousands of liters of some of the world's most expensive perfumes - did you know that, to make one liter of the "essence" of a particular flower, you need to collect between two and three thousand pounds of petals? We also got to see the room where the soap is being made (and the only room where I managed to take some photos when the guide turned away, as photography is STRICTLY forbidden - take a look on Picasa!) and, finally, the laboratory. This is where the "nose" works (that's really what they call them), sitting in front of an "organ" of smells. The organ consists of countless tiny bottles and flasks, arranged in many rows, containing all or almost all distinct smells used in perfume production, and a large mixing flask in the middle.
The guide told us about the education required to become a nose. There are only three schools in the entire world: one in Grasse, one in Paris, and one somewhere in Switzerland. The exam that you have to pass at the end requires you to be able to distinguish and name over 500 different smells, as well as be capable of smelling a complex perfume and breaking it down into the individual components. At the end of the tour, the guide let us smell samples of some of the perfumes currently on sale in their store and challenged us to guess what components were present in them. An average perfume that you buy in the store is composed of 25 to 250 different individual scents (about 150 on average), but picking up even the basic and most prominent ones is harder than it seems. I succeeded at finding vanilla in one of the samples and lemon in another, but that was about it... If you're at all interested in all of this, you should absolutely read the book "Perfume" by Patrick Süskind - it's way too freaky and crazy, but definitely a worthwhile read.
Oh, and Grasse is also full of cats of all breeds and sizes. It's a random observation, but you really can't help noticing all the felines... They're everywhere. One even attacked us and chased us away from the town hall - I don't know if he was trained to do that, or if he just happened to find our company too unpleasant.
The Principality of Monaco that we visited on Sunday yielded somewhat fewer memories, but was still worth the bus ride. It's a tiny little sovereign state surrounded by France and the Mediterranean, with a prince from the Grimaldi royal family which has ruled the principality since 1297. Monaco collects very few taxes, and so millionaires from all over Europe buy apartments in the high-rise buildings and declare them as their primary residences, thus evading the taxes they would have had to pay in the country where they actually live. Most of the millionaires don't really spend too much of their time there, and the people on the streets are generally tourists. You do see the occasional Ferrari or Jaguar driving up to a house, though, so I guess the millionaires do come every once in a while to pay their bills and do some cleaning in the near-empty flats. Monte-Carlo was a little disappointing, with a single casino that was very low-key and discreet - nothing on the scale of Las Vegas or even Altlantic City. We didn't even go in because the casino charges 10 euros just for entering the premises.
I'm leaving to Geneva in two days! Had to struggle through about 20 minutes of panic today when I realized that Switzerland is not a Schengen country (I only have a Schengen visa), but then it turned out that they do not require a visa from U.S. citizens OR Green Card holders, whew!
I guess the next post will be describing Amsterdam and Geneva adventures... See you later!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Hi, nice to meet you! Now kiss me.
Hey, welcome back! Sorry for the long pause, I was busy making and spending money. More specifically, I worked on a grant proposal so that I can continue getting paid at the lab, and booked trips for both fall break and winter break. Which means that now I really have to stick to that 2 Euro lunch menu, but: 1) I'm leaving for Geneva and then Amsterdam in 10 days, and 2), but certainly not last, Alina is coming here for a week in the winter, and we're traveling to Paris together for New Year's!!! The degree of awesomness of all the aforementioned can hardly be underestimated ;).
Meanwhile, it's classes and work and many many new friends over here. I'm beginning to spend more and more time with people outside the Maryland group, both foreign and French. On Saturday, two German exchange students and I went to Menton, a small town on the coast about a mile away from the Italian border. If you thought the views of Nice that I had put up earlier were beautiful, go to Picasa again and take a look at this. The old part of the city sits on a very steep hill, and all of its tiny streets are actually staircases. I was just wondering how in the world the people who live in these houses lug heavy things, ex. furniture, up all these stairs, when the answer came roaring out out one of the alleyways. Picture a VERY large shopping cart with caterpillars instead of wheels and a motor that moves it according to the direction in which the person walking behind is pushing. That thing climbs the stairs as if they weren't even there, a very practical solution, I suppose. I don't think I would necessarily want to live in Menton, as there's nothing to do, really (except maybe bake bread or study at the tiny College of Maritime Law), but it's absolutely stunning. Look at the pictures. Look at the pictures. No, I'm not trying to hypnotize you, where'd you get THAT idea from? Look at the pictures.
Another trip that you have to see the pictures from was a short hike between two mountain villages (album titled "Walk to Contes"). The only thing I can really say about that one, apart from "go on Picasa right now", is that we picked grapes and figs on the way. Growing on the side of the road. Just like that. This story works best when told in a casual tone, something along the lines of "Oh yeah, we're walking, picking some grapes and figs, talking about such and such things..."
It's also cool that the bus driver knows almost everybody on the bus by the name, since there're not too many people living in this village and he's one of the few drivers assigned to the route. He would exchange jokes and very personal stories with the passengers, all while driving up a road that was definitely not intended for buses half that size. The switchbacks are so sharp that, on some turns, the driver can't make the turn directly and has to switch into reverse, roll back a little, turn a little more in forward gear, go back again - like a car turning around in a very narrow street. Every time an approaching car jumps out from a turn just in front of the bus, our merry driver slams on... the horn. Not the brake. Mind you, the blasting horn of these buses could turn some medium-sized ships green with envy. If I were driving on a winding mountain road in my little Smart or Mini and suddenly saw this behemoth approaching and bellowing for me to yield, a heart attack would have been inevitable. But the drivers here seem not to mind - they quickly pull over, let us through and just wave amicably!
Oh, yes, the title of this post! Time for a little culture lesson. In and around Nice, whenever you meet somebody you know, you have to kiss them once on each cheek. The same goes for people you're being presented to. The common acquaintance tells you the other person's name and tells them yours, and then you kiss. This bears practically the same level of intimacy as our "Hi". Not doing it would be approximately equal to not greeting someone you know, and can be regarded as offensive. The process gets progressively longer and more entertaining with more people. If, for example, a group of 10 students meets a group of 5 students, that means a total of 100 kisses (remember, one on each cheek!) Normally, the larger group stands in a semicircle, and the smaller groups goes around in a line kissing everybody - a method polished to perfection for the sake of time economy. The only cases when an exception is granted or tolerated is between two guys (the local guys still do it, but they understand that foreigners may be uncomfortable with it and do not insist), between people of very different age, or if someone is very sick. Once again, this is not a French thing - this is a Nice thing. If you're a guy yourself and tried to kiss a guy you just met in Paris, for example, he would have no questions about your orientation. You can still kiss girls in Paris, but from what I gather it's not required and mostly reserved for closer friends.
Another cultural thing - many bars, clubs, and pubs employ exclusively anglo-saxons who can barely, if at all, speak French. At first I thought that it was just a few super-touristy establishments, but then last Friday I went out with a French crowd, and they took me to one of their favorite places - I ended up translating all the dialogue between them and the bartender, as the only way they could communicate without a mediator is with wild hand gestures and menu-pointing. Very ironic. There're even some clubs that don't let you in unless you're a native English speaker in an effort to "preserve the atmosphere"... Now how is that reasonable? Discuss.
I know I'm boring you with French facts, but here's one last one: because public schools are strictly secular (it is forbidden to wear any signs of faith, including head scarves, crosses, stars of David, and whatever else you can think of), many Muslims enroll their children in Catholic schools because they end up being more tolerant than public ones. There is a Catholic school in Marseilles, for example, where over 70% of all students are Muslim. They are allowed to wear head scarves and pray openly during recess or lunch hours, something they would never be able to do in a state-owned facility. Once again, discuss.
Well, I suppose that's plenty for now. Write me some comments! Thanks!
Meanwhile, it's classes and work and many many new friends over here. I'm beginning to spend more and more time with people outside the Maryland group, both foreign and French. On Saturday, two German exchange students and I went to Menton, a small town on the coast about a mile away from the Italian border. If you thought the views of Nice that I had put up earlier were beautiful, go to Picasa again and take a look at this. The old part of the city sits on a very steep hill, and all of its tiny streets are actually staircases. I was just wondering how in the world the people who live in these houses lug heavy things, ex. furniture, up all these stairs, when the answer came roaring out out one of the alleyways. Picture a VERY large shopping cart with caterpillars instead of wheels and a motor that moves it according to the direction in which the person walking behind is pushing. That thing climbs the stairs as if they weren't even there, a very practical solution, I suppose. I don't think I would necessarily want to live in Menton, as there's nothing to do, really (except maybe bake bread or study at the tiny College of Maritime Law), but it's absolutely stunning. Look at the pictures. Look at the pictures. No, I'm not trying to hypnotize you, where'd you get THAT idea from? Look at the pictures.
Another trip that you have to see the pictures from was a short hike between two mountain villages (album titled "Walk to Contes"). The only thing I can really say about that one, apart from "go on Picasa right now", is that we picked grapes and figs on the way. Growing on the side of the road. Just like that. This story works best when told in a casual tone, something along the lines of "Oh yeah, we're walking, picking some grapes and figs, talking about such and such things..."
It's also cool that the bus driver knows almost everybody on the bus by the name, since there're not too many people living in this village and he's one of the few drivers assigned to the route. He would exchange jokes and very personal stories with the passengers, all while driving up a road that was definitely not intended for buses half that size. The switchbacks are so sharp that, on some turns, the driver can't make the turn directly and has to switch into reverse, roll back a little, turn a little more in forward gear, go back again - like a car turning around in a very narrow street. Every time an approaching car jumps out from a turn just in front of the bus, our merry driver slams on... the horn. Not the brake. Mind you, the blasting horn of these buses could turn some medium-sized ships green with envy. If I were driving on a winding mountain road in my little Smart or Mini and suddenly saw this behemoth approaching and bellowing for me to yield, a heart attack would have been inevitable. But the drivers here seem not to mind - they quickly pull over, let us through and just wave amicably!
Oh, yes, the title of this post! Time for a little culture lesson. In and around Nice, whenever you meet somebody you know, you have to kiss them once on each cheek. The same goes for people you're being presented to. The common acquaintance tells you the other person's name and tells them yours, and then you kiss. This bears practically the same level of intimacy as our "Hi". Not doing it would be approximately equal to not greeting someone you know, and can be regarded as offensive. The process gets progressively longer and more entertaining with more people. If, for example, a group of 10 students meets a group of 5 students, that means a total of 100 kisses (remember, one on each cheek!) Normally, the larger group stands in a semicircle, and the smaller groups goes around in a line kissing everybody - a method polished to perfection for the sake of time economy. The only cases when an exception is granted or tolerated is between two guys (the local guys still do it, but they understand that foreigners may be uncomfortable with it and do not insist), between people of very different age, or if someone is very sick. Once again, this is not a French thing - this is a Nice thing. If you're a guy yourself and tried to kiss a guy you just met in Paris, for example, he would have no questions about your orientation. You can still kiss girls in Paris, but from what I gather it's not required and mostly reserved for closer friends.
Another cultural thing - many bars, clubs, and pubs employ exclusively anglo-saxons who can barely, if at all, speak French. At first I thought that it was just a few super-touristy establishments, but then last Friday I went out with a French crowd, and they took me to one of their favorite places - I ended up translating all the dialogue between them and the bartender, as the only way they could communicate without a mediator is with wild hand gestures and menu-pointing. Very ironic. There're even some clubs that don't let you in unless you're a native English speaker in an effort to "preserve the atmosphere"... Now how is that reasonable? Discuss.
I know I'm boring you with French facts, but here's one last one: because public schools are strictly secular (it is forbidden to wear any signs of faith, including head scarves, crosses, stars of David, and whatever else you can think of), many Muslims enroll their children in Catholic schools because they end up being more tolerant than public ones. There is a Catholic school in Marseilles, for example, where over 70% of all students are Muslim. They are allowed to wear head scarves and pray openly during recess or lunch hours, something they would never be able to do in a state-owned facility. Once again, discuss.
Well, I suppose that's plenty for now. Write me some comments! Thanks!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
First week of school - 70 degrees and sunny
On Monday, I got up bright and early, excited to go to my first real class of this semester. The three weeks of "intensive preparation" and exams don't really count - they have been more of a continuation of summer break than anything else. As the classroom was filling up, Dora and I, both feeling a little intimidated about having placed in the highest and hence most difficult level, cautiously spoke with the people sitting next to us to figure out how well they know French. The results exceeded our worst expectations: the Mexican girl on the right had lived here since 2005 and spoke the language perfectly with all the slang and local expressions, and the Norwegian lady on the left had been teaching French in Norway for fifteen years and had a doctoral degree in translation. Frightened, we waited for the professor to arrive. Fifteen minutes later, he still wasn't there. Half an hour later, no sign of him. Finally, we sent a delegation to the secretariat to see what's going on, and found out that the professor has called in ill. Not a problem - the beach is 10 minutes away from the University, and the two hours that we had until our next class were spent peacefully tanning under the Mediterranean sun.
The adventure did not end here, though: the next class ALSO happened to be canceled, this time for an undeclared reason. The same fate awaited our third and fourth classes, and soon we found ourselves walking back home from the first day of school without having seen a single teacher. Quite a promising beginning!
The following day, however, everything went as planned. Profs showed up, and we discovered that we had nothing to worry about - the two super-French speakers whom we had used in our random sampling of linguistic ability are actually far ahead of everyone else in the group, and we fall somewhere very close to the middle. Even more importantly, the professors all seem very knowledgeable and interested in their respective subjects. It was interesting to hear the "economic and political geography" professor's view of NATO (which the French call OTAN by the way - all the same words, just pronounced with a French accent and reversed in order). So anyways, he said that NATO has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, lost all of its purpose and should be disbanded as soon as possible. He also defended Russia's actions in the Georgian conflict, saying that he can't blame the Kremlin for seeing America's presence in the region as a threat to their security. I don't know if I agree entirely, but it was interesting to hear how differently the entire situation is perceived here - in the States, every newsflash would have had some kind of synonym of "Russian aggression" present.
One of my favorite pastimes is now lying on the beach with a French book. I almost finished my Balzac, ready to move on to more contemporary things. I am also much more tan now than I was at the end of August, which is at the same time cool and ironic. Life is also becoming a lot more established, especially with regards to food spending: I normally eat a little piece of yesterday's bread for breakfast, then buy some tasty little thing from a boulangerie (bakery) for lunch - usually a piece of quiche or a slice of pizza, both of which cost only 2 euros - and then we take turns cooking dinners at our apartment. The pizza is, by the way, not even the same dish as the thing they call pizza in the States. It has very little cheese, a very thin crust, amazing tomato sauce and lots of mixed veggies. Definitely a great treat.
Today, we went to the cinema to see the new film "Entre les murs" (Between the Walls). It's about a young and inspired teacher working in an inner-city school in a poor district of Paris. He tries and tries to give something to the 13- and 14-year-olds, searches incessantly for a way to connect with them, but it just doesn't work. The barrier between them, consisting of a whole mix of social, linguistic, educational, and moral differences, is almost impermeable. They refuse to believe that he actually cares about them, and he can't understand what and how they're thinking. Eventually, during one of the classes, he finally loses his temper for a second, and the students immediattely band together against him. The movie ends at the end of the school year, when he asks the pupils to share something they had learned over the past nine months, and some are unable to come up with a single thing. It is frankly one of the most depressing yet thought-provoking films I've seen in a while, I strongly recommend seeing it at some point... By the way, there were no subtitles and I understood everything!!! Not every single word, of course, but all the conversations and ideas. The words that I didn't recognize were either apparent from the context or just not very important. Yay!!!
Well, I guess I'll get going, it's a little late and I have class tomorrow... If they don't cancel it, that is... Look at the new pictures on Picasa!
The adventure did not end here, though: the next class ALSO happened to be canceled, this time for an undeclared reason. The same fate awaited our third and fourth classes, and soon we found ourselves walking back home from the first day of school without having seen a single teacher. Quite a promising beginning!
The following day, however, everything went as planned. Profs showed up, and we discovered that we had nothing to worry about - the two super-French speakers whom we had used in our random sampling of linguistic ability are actually far ahead of everyone else in the group, and we fall somewhere very close to the middle. Even more importantly, the professors all seem very knowledgeable and interested in their respective subjects. It was interesting to hear the "economic and political geography" professor's view of NATO (which the French call OTAN by the way - all the same words, just pronounced with a French accent and reversed in order). So anyways, he said that NATO has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, lost all of its purpose and should be disbanded as soon as possible. He also defended Russia's actions in the Georgian conflict, saying that he can't blame the Kremlin for seeing America's presence in the region as a threat to their security. I don't know if I agree entirely, but it was interesting to hear how differently the entire situation is perceived here - in the States, every newsflash would have had some kind of synonym of "Russian aggression" present.
One of my favorite pastimes is now lying on the beach with a French book. I almost finished my Balzac, ready to move on to more contemporary things. I am also much more tan now than I was at the end of August, which is at the same time cool and ironic. Life is also becoming a lot more established, especially with regards to food spending: I normally eat a little piece of yesterday's bread for breakfast, then buy some tasty little thing from a boulangerie (bakery) for lunch - usually a piece of quiche or a slice of pizza, both of which cost only 2 euros - and then we take turns cooking dinners at our apartment. The pizza is, by the way, not even the same dish as the thing they call pizza in the States. It has very little cheese, a very thin crust, amazing tomato sauce and lots of mixed veggies. Definitely a great treat.
Today, we went to the cinema to see the new film "Entre les murs" (Between the Walls). It's about a young and inspired teacher working in an inner-city school in a poor district of Paris. He tries and tries to give something to the 13- and 14-year-olds, searches incessantly for a way to connect with them, but it just doesn't work. The barrier between them, consisting of a whole mix of social, linguistic, educational, and moral differences, is almost impermeable. They refuse to believe that he actually cares about them, and he can't understand what and how they're thinking. Eventually, during one of the classes, he finally loses his temper for a second, and the students immediattely band together against him. The movie ends at the end of the school year, when he asks the pupils to share something they had learned over the past nine months, and some are unable to come up with a single thing. It is frankly one of the most depressing yet thought-provoking films I've seen in a while, I strongly recommend seeing it at some point... By the way, there were no subtitles and I understood everything!!! Not every single word, of course, but all the conversations and ideas. The words that I didn't recognize were either apparent from the context or just not very important. Yay!!!
Well, I guess I'll get going, it's a little late and I have class tomorrow... If they don't cancel it, that is... Look at the new pictures on Picasa!
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