New Videos

There & Back

Created for a final presentation in my Cultural Translation Workshop, this is a video translation of the last academic year of my life between Paris and Minneapolis. With over an hour of footage to narrow down, I chose clips depicting the constant movement and restlessness of living in two places, which can result simultaneously in both excitement and loneliness. No matter where I live, in Paris or in Minneapolis, my heart is always missing the other.

April

My regular monthly video for April, including visiting Fontainebleau, running the The Color Run 5K, visiting Annecy and Geneva with my sister, hiking on my birthday in the Alps and, of course, regular life in Paris.

20 American Things I'm Excited For

I love Paris, but since I'm going home for a month starting December 21st, I've been daydreaming about a number of American things during this end-of-the-semester-from-hell. As a sequel to my "Things I Will Miss About America" post, here are a few things that I'm looking forward to during my month home over the holidays.

1. The ability to buy shoes in my size
2. Taking elevators all day, every day
3. Driving all day, every day (Unless it's snowing)
4. Being able to use my credit card for small purchases
5. Huge grocery stores with everything you'd ever want in them
6. Snow (The excitement will be brief)
7. Chicken wings
8. Root beer
9. Cold beer
10. A major haircut
11. Free laundry- in the house! No carrying my laundry up and down my seven flights of stairs to Raspail          and paying 15 euros a load!
12. Not cooking
13. Curly fries
14. Central heating
15. The U.S. dollar
16. Space. I'm pretty sure my parents' house is bigger than my chambre de bonne!
17. Outdoor activities, like skiing, ice skating and sledding
18. Cookies
19. Playing the piano
20. One-stop shopping (Watch out, Target!)

"When good Americans die, they go to Paris." -Oscar Wilde

     This weekend was really centered around death. I got to see the Père-Lachaise and Montparnasse cemeteries, of which the first one is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Père-Lachaise is full of mossy tombs, statues and gravestones that date from all different eras and mark so many famous names, it's truly amazing. I made it to the graves of Edith Piaf, Sarah Bernhardt, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde (which has the tradition of being kissed) and Chopin. Even though it's a 45 minute commute, I really want to go back and find others that I missed, like Gertrude Stein and just read a book there or something. 

Kissing Oscar Wilde

     Today was not a good day. I started my internship at 9 AM, which I tried to be positive about, but it really gets old when you feel like a two-year-old all day long. I wasn't given a lot of work to do, but it was hard to understand and be understood entirely in French, especially with tourism industry-specialized words, like pax, which apparently is internationally recognized as "persons." For lunch, which is from 1-2 pm in France, it was interesting to see all the other working French go out and get their lunch to-go, as in a sandwich at a boulangerie or various hot made-from-scratch meals. What a different experience lunch during work is here. During my summer job, I speed away from work in my car to the nearest fast-food place, throw a burger in my mouth, scatter fries all over the floor while probably driving with a knee or two and then I still show up late. I'm definitely liking the lunch scene better over here. By 6 PM, I was almost nodding off and my boss thankfully let me go home. (I took myself shopping on the Champs-Élysées instead.)

     To continue my fun, I decided to do laundry. Joy! I had heard that the American who lived in my room last semester got her clothes stuck in the washing machine for three days. I put on a brave face tonight, put my coins in and hoped for the best. Guess whose clothes are stuck this semester? This girl.

    Can't wait to get away to Arles and Marseille this weekend.

Rachel