La Famiglia

So, I've finally done it... I took pictures of most of my host family, except Isabelle, who doesn't live at home, and I can now introduce them to you. So here they are: the family of Comte et Comtesse Phillipe et Véronique de la Cropte de Chantérac, in all their glory.

Here is the Count himself, lighting the birthday candles for Henri's 15th anniversaire. We had tarte tatin instead of cake, and I was just fine with that. Phillipe is perhaps the calmest of the whole bunch, and definitely lends a sort of... centered feel to the house that it didn't have when he was in the hospital (recovering from surgery).






This is the Countess, also known as Véronique, or Véro for those in the inner circle. In this photograph, she's probably forcefully announcing her opinion on something -- perhaps on the subject of teenage drinking, or the fact that Jean (who is 23) doesn't eat dinner at home enough. Véro is a little nuts, but I like her all the same.












This is Jean, the fils ainé, a 23-year-old engineering student who lives upstairs in the old maid's quarters. He's really much more handsome than this photograph would have you believe. Jean's a charmer, with a bit of a raffish streak. He and I have an excellent dinner rapport, where he makes fun of the other members of the family and I laugh, and then everyone else asks what we're laughing about. Also, we have matching sneakers.










There should be a picture of Isabelle here, but you're going to have to make due with Louis. Louis is 20, and spends most of his time studying to get into the grands écoles, the really prestigious business schools in France. He also enjoys soccer and Nicholas Sarkozy.













This is Marguerite, the 16-year-old. Margotte is a woman of the theater, and also plays guitar and sings a lot. She's hilarious. Jean is her favorite brother, although she and Henri are also really close, since they're so close in age. She enjoys making fun of Louis for his prominent chin, which she says makes his head look like a potato chip. This is an important family joke.











And this is Henri, the fils cadet, who just barely turned 15. He's studying Russian (and English and German), and one of his party tricks is telling you what your name would be in Russian (apparently they follow a strict patronymic system, so I'd be Elizabeth Rogeryana or something similar). He also plays soccer, and a lot of FIFA soccer on X-Box when the time arises. One of his aspirations is to buy a big pick-up truck and drive it around both North and South America. He wants to come to the US this summer and stay with a family with kids around his age -- any takers?

So that's the fam. They're pretty wonderful and a little kooky, and I enjoy them immensely.

Return of the image!

And I'm back in the game! I've been back in Paris for just about three weeks now, and enjoying all that life à la français has to offer, as usual. The big news about this semester is that I have an internship with Lobster Films (link at the right) as a sort of... translating peon, if you will. I'm the only native English speaker on staff (although most of the people who work there speak English with a great deal more ease and grace than I, at times, can summon up in my second language), so many of theFrench-to-English translation projects in the office go through me. I spend most of my time translating film descriptions for silent film serials from the 1900s-1920s (right now I'm working on one about a rivalry between two sailors over a beautiful café waitress), but I just finished working on a 40-page script for an original documentary about Robin Hood - both the "reality" of Robin and the evolution of the Robin Hood myth through the years, starting with French pastoral ballads in the Middle Ages and ending with cinematic adaptations in more recent years. It was an interesting project, and really gratifying to work on something that is actually going to get made.

In other news, classes have started again, and they're a thrill, as always... Well, no. Completely without sarcasm, my classes this semester do seem a lot better than those I took last semester. My History of Sound Film professor is maybe 35 and used to make movies himself, and has a lot of really wonderful things to say about, for instance, Walt Disney (who he holds almost singularly responsible for ruining children's education), and an interesting experience-based perspective to bring to the material. The class is small, maybe 15 kids, and the teacher encourages student participation, which is really kind of wonderful. I'm taking a literature class in the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Louis Aragon which, despite being at 8AM on Monday mornings, is well-taught and even includes some structure! Like a syllabus! I'm also taking two classes with the program, "Paris au cinéma" and the same grammar/language class I took last semester (the more advanced version, of course). All in all, this looks to be a more academically rewarding semester than the last one -- although you'll have to check in with me again when examen time rolls around.

Other time has been spent hanging out with the new kids - five of whom are from Haverford - which has been fun, a day trip to Chartres to see the cathedral and stroll around for a bit, babysitting, learning to knit, planning further outrageous vacations (the hypothetical crown jewel being Spring Break: Croatia), exploring some new areas of the city, and playing hostess to Uncle Tim and Aunt Margaret, who are here visiting two nieces - Julia, on Aunt Margaret's side, has also been studying in Paris for the year. With all that packed in, I've had to re-learn, a bit, how to be busy - while I only had two days a week that started before noon last semester, I have to be up by 8:30 almost every day, and usually don't get home until an hour before dinner. I'm not sure that my host family quite knows what to do with this new Liz incarnation, but it feels pretty all right to have things to do again.

Winter was here for about four days - we even got some flurries! - but that ship seems to have sailed, and the temperatures are back up in the 50s during the day, which I'm learning to accept. I do miss tramping around in the snow, however. Anyhow, I should get off to bed soon, since I'm ushering Tim and Margaret around the Musée d'Orsay tomorrow morning, but I'll leave you with this lovely image of the heights of French hygiene in parting: as I was walking my young charges to English School last Wednesday, the butcher's shop down the street was getting a meat delivery, but they didn't really seem to worried about efficiency of delivery, so the truck was just kind of parked in the middle of a fairly busy intersection, meat dangling off hooks at the back of the truck. Just look.