Rachel in Paris: Italy

Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Lakes & Lights is Now Open on Etsy!

I just launched my first Etsy shop, Lakes & Lights, featuring the art I've made in the past few years. After being encouraged to sell my art, I finally put a few things up on Etsy.

I've loved making art ever since I was little. I was the kid who drew a bicycle in kindergarten while the other five-year-olds crowded around, and the fifth grader whose painting was mistaken for the teacher's. By the time I hit high school and college, I became less of a stand-out while other students got serious about their art, and I never really pursued it as more than a hobby, taking an art class here and there when I had time for electives. I've always made paintings and drawings for friends and family, but I've certainly never been serious about it. I'm still very much an amateur.

I learned plein air sketching and watercolor painting from my fantastic Augsburg College professor Tara Sweeney in Italy in 2011 and ever since, I've always carried a sketchbook with me. She taught me that painting and sketching help you see and experience traveling in a way that cameras can't. Basically everything I know about watercolor and sketching, I learned from Tara.

Lakes & Lights is inspired by my two homes, the City of Lakes (Minneapolis) and the City of Light (Paris), and anywhere in between.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Lost in Translation

In case it wasn't clear what I've been doing this summer other than traipsing around the Riviera and London, I've actually been working on my thesis, a translation of a book called Paris: Quinze promenades sociologiques (English: Paris: Fifteen Sociological Walks). The second reason I chose this master's program (the first being, well, Paris) was that, like most master's programs abroad, it was only one year in duration—two semesters of classes and one summer session where you write your 25,000-word-minimum thesis. Knowing what I know now, I am so glad that I went this route for grad school, because I don’t know if I had it in me to have done two years back at home. School has always come pretty naturally to me and I’ve always done pretty well when I’ve tried really hard, and okay when I haven’t.

But grad school is different.

I had to work the hardest I’ve ever worked. There was no sliding by or cutting corners. The readings were chock-full of complex ideas by writers and translators who I’d never heard of but that my classmates seemed to have almost known on a personal level. I was the one who showed up to class, barely having been able to get through a dense, forty-page article on what it means to be a native informant in cultural translation, having extracted the most minute kernels of meaning out of it, and then spending the rest of the class period trying to keep my deer-in-the-headlights look under control because I actually didn't understand any of it. Nothing was easy. I don’t think there was ever a single moment of complete clarity where I confidently showed up to a class thinking I had the field of cultural theory figured out in any sort of way. I was constantly thinking to myself, why in the world did I choose this incredibly expensive year of torture over teaching English part-time?

Almost the entire time, I would keep prefacing that I was new and very green to translation. But, underdog as I was, I am so glad that I did it. I proved to myself that I could get through a year among some truly brilliant classmates and professors who are entirely more passionate about translation than I ever care to be. I’ve always felt completely average in everything that I do and grad school confirmed that to me—but hey, I was able to roll with the best of them. It’s okay and, frankly, almost a relief to not be the absolute best at something. It reminds me of when I got to Augsburg, intending to be a music major and realizing I was no longer the best pianist of the bunch like I had been at home and that I was actually pretty terrible at music theory. If I had to go back and choose a master’s program, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would choose something different, but it is what it is. There was something very humbling and refreshing about learning a new art form (and translation really is an art form that Google Translate will never be able to replicate) from scratch and sitting back and just learning from other people who are dedicating their lives to transferring the experiences of one culture and language into another. It’s a rigorous field that is both underappreciated and taken for granted.

Matt came to visit me for a little over a week in the beginning of August after his London program ended and then my friend Megan who I’ve been friends with since our freshman year at Augsburg was in Paris for a month-long program before heading off to Bologna, Italy for the year. Saying goodbye to the two of them—Matt goes to school in Indiana and Megan will be in Italy until next summer—was hard. I don’t like saying goodbye and I don’t like being left in Paris, my favorite place in the world, without anyone to share in it with me anymore.

The latter half of August, I devoted myself to getting serious about my thesis and there were days where I wouldn’t leave my tiny chambre de bonne at all. I started with the goal of only translating about three chapters of the book, and the more time that has passed, the more I've added to it. While we were allotted just the summer to complete our theses, no one in the history of the program has ever finished by September. Even though I participated in commencement, I don’t officially graduate until I’ve turned in my thesis, so I hope to submit and defend it via Skype by December so I can graduate this semester.

On top of translating from sunrise to sunset, I moved from my room with a view. I moved myself and my seventy-three bags of hell eight minutes away on foot to the rue Saint-Jacques in a studio twice the size of my former room. Let me just say that you can’t really complain about moving until you’ve singlehandedly carried a fifty-pound suitcase among other luggage down the world’s steepest spiral staircase. It gives me a whole new respect for the donkeys in Santorini that I once refused to ride up the 500 steps of the caldera. I feel you, donkeys. I feel you.

So now it’s two weeks left in Paris to close up shop—cancel my phone plan and bank account, figure out what in the hell I’m going to do with all of my stuff and say goodbye once again to this city I’m so in love with. But somehow, someday, I'll be back. I promise.

Love,

Rachel

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Champagne Supernova

I, admittedly, haven't seen much of France outside of Paris. It's a little strange that I've seen much, much more of Italy, for example, than France. Last year, I spent a weekend in Marseille and Arles and went on a day trip to Giverny with Central, as well as an awesome hiking trip to Fontainebleau on my own with friends, but other than that, I know nothing about France outside of Paris firsthand. Quel dommage! I see this as a real problem, because it's like only visiting New York in the States (I hate when people say 'the States', but I just did it.). When Parisians realize I'm American (Which takes all of two seconds), they immediately start confessing their love for New York (And sometimes California) even if they've never been there. When I say that I'm actually from Minnesota, I think I burst their bubble. It really peeves me that New York is somehow a microcosm of the U.S. for foreigners in the same way that Paris is for France. In reality, most Americans are NOT from New York and don't live that lifestyle and I think the same goes for the French in regard to Paris. It seems like I'm constantly defending and promoting Minnesota, but I think it usually falls on deaf ears (I think Parisians are just not interested in our lakes or freezing your ass off in the nearly year-round snow).

I sometimes find myself wishing I had just gone the TAPIF route and been placed in a small town in the middle of nowhere just so I can have that alternate experience of France. But I love Paris too much, so I couldn't let that happen. Yet. Maybe another time, since the program allows you to do it until you're 29. But by 29, I should maybe try to have my life a little more put together (Or not. We'll see where I'm at when the time comes. A wise philosopher once said, "YOLO." and I've taken that to heart).

Anyway, my point is that this past weekend, the graduate students went on a day trip to Reims, at the heart of the Champagne region and I loved seeing more of France. There was so little time to see or do anything, so after our two-hour bus ride in, we immediately went to Notre-Dame de Reims, a beautiful thirteenth-century Gothic cathedral whose structure resembles Notre-Dame de Paris, but whose façade is much more ornate. We also saw the Basilique Saint-Remi de Reims, which I actually enjoyed more due to the lack of tourists and a choir practicing in the back. I am such a sucker for European churches. I'm starting to get a little jaded when it comes to their aesthetic beauty, but it just floors me how old they are and to think of how many generations have spent their time- very personal time- in them. I also love them because they're free.

The rest of the day, we spent at the French Champagne house, Pommery. Again, clearly knowing nothing about France at large, I was expecting a Champagne house to be in the countryside and to be able to see the actual fields where the grapes are produced, but Pommery is well within the bounds of the town. I'm learning.

We had a tour of the cellar, where an astounding 28 million bottles are currently stored. Shit! Think about that. Like really think about it. If I did my ~~Googling~~ math right, that's more than five bottles of Champagne for every Minnesotan. I've done winery tours before (In Italy and Greece), but nowhere near as massive as Pommery.

So here are the photos I took while in Reims that don't really do it justice.

Love,
Rachel

Notre-Dame de Reims

Notre-Dame de Reims- the windows were done by Marc Chagall in the 1970s

Notre-Dame de Reims

Reims

Basilique Saint-Remi de Reims

Reims

Pommery

Pommery- this wall engraving was done under candlelight and took a year to complete.

The oldest Pommery Champagnes

Pommery

Saturday, April 6, 2013

La Dolce Vita

Italy is beautiful. Like jaw-droppingly, let's-never-go-back-home kind of beautiful. Hardly anything beats the kind of happy you feel waking up in Italy with a foamy cappuccino and the sound of birds chirping outside. Just thinking about it brightens up the drizzly, gloomy weather we've been having in Minneapolis this week.

My first visit to Italy was in May 2011 when I studied abroad with one of my best friends, Amanda, and thirteen others on Augsburg's "Art and Spiritual Practice in Italy" trip for eighteen days, where we learned plein air sketching and about the lives of St. Francis and St. Clare. In Siena, we sunbathed in the Piazza del Campo and enjoyed getting lost in the medieval architecture. We then took on the Apennines mountain range, trekking for three days through the Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi on a pilgrimage following St. Francis' steps to his retreat at La Verna, atop Monte Penna. None of us believed our professors when they told us we should train for it, so it turned into a brutal three days, particularly when we had to wear garbage bags during the downpour and thunder on our second full day. This was a full-on shower-like rain, so when we stopped to eat our soaked prosciutto sandwiches, we were so miserable that no one spoke. I think half of us just threw our sandwiches in the trees. Despite being the most physically challenging thing I've ever done, I now have a real love for hiking and would love to go back and do it all over again. We then traveled to Assisi, a small village on Monte Subasio in Umbria, which had beautiful churches and scenery and finished up in awe of the splendor of Rome.

I can't wait to see more of Italy someday, like Sicily, Lake Como and the Cinque Terre and revisit the small towns of Tuscany and Umbria, because not much beats the sunshine, wine and pasta of Italy.

Rachel