Southern visits

Hello all, and happy December!

I hope that you somehow hold it in your hearts to forgive me, gentle readers, for having held you in suspense on my life happenings these past weeks.

Academics at Sciences Po have proven to be more time-consuming and challenging than I ever would have anticipated, but enjoyable nonetheless ; I feel as though I have learned a great deal, and a great deal more of how much I have yet to learn.

This past month has been filled with little but research and essays, and an increasingly-challenged and distracted mind has found it hard to fit time for a blog update in the gaps among Somali clan institutions, the position of the individual in public international law, the tensions between democratic global governance and collective security, and the Korean War's impact on the course of the Cold War...it all leaves me with a richer understanding of my studies, to be sure, but also feeling overwhelmed by how little I actually understand of what I study, if that makes any sense.

In any case, an update is more than appropriate, but how to fit all that which took place (outside of classes and schoolwork) in the past five weeks in a quickly and readable account is a challenge. I decided, therefore, to write about diverse events along the semi-unifying theme of "Southern visits": a visit to the Southeast of France, visitors from the South who passed some time in Paris, and a visit from French friends to a semi-Southern-themed Thanksgiving dinner.

A visit to the South of France: Gap, Briançon, and Grenoble

My Sciences Po buddy (through "le buddy programme" of Sciences Po's exchange program), Louise Perrodin, invited me to spend fall break (27-31 October) with her, Clémence and Louisa - two of her French friends - and Dmitry - a Russian exchange student, in a lakehouse near the city of Gap and in the city of Grenoble, in the southeastern part of France. Of course I jumped at the offer, not knowing when next (if ever again) I would get a chance to be in that part of France again.

I had very little idea of what to expect from an invitation to spend some days at a lakehouse in a part of the world I had never seen, but what passed was a wonderful visit in what was one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited.

The "lake house" (which is actually a full-blown house by any standard - spacious and solid yet at the same time charming, constructed of stone and sturdy wooden doors, furnished by comfortable sofas and kept warm by a large fireplace) is beautifully situated near the shores of Lac de Serre-Ponçon, some hours drive south of Gap, in the Alps's "foothills" (the mountains were still an imposing skyline, to be sure). Artificially made, the lake is nevertheless both enormous and, surrounded as it was by deciduously-forested hills and then, a little farther out, the snowy peaks, simply beautiful (and that was before it snowed the first night we were there). I snapped several pictures from the deck in the back and from the shores of the lake and will put them (along with other photos that correspond to this blog post) on Facebook as soon as I figure out how my user-friendly (but nevertheless a challenge, for this guy) iPhoto program works.

The time spent in that house mostly revolved around recovery from the mid-semester point : sleeping, eating, drinking tea, reading, and watching films, broken up by long, bracing walks down alongside the lake's shore or higher up near the start of the mountain's footpaths. The meals were definitely a highlight, as collective efforts led by Louise and Louisa produced crêpes with emmental cheese one day, raclette cheese warmed by the fire and cut in melted slices onto baked potatoes and salami another, and chocolate in various forms – bars of, nutella, or hot cocoa - almost continuously. The conversation that passed was also worth savoring, freely ranging along politics (the French are nothing if not critical of American politics, though not always unkindly so, and I am learning a great deal from those criticisms) and culture (my ignorance about American culture was once again revealed to me by conversations with Dmitry, who, though Russian, knows more about American literature and music than almost anyone else I know) without ever becoming abrasive and usually as warm and friendly as the roaring fire that we started on our arrival and didn't put out till we left.

All in all, those days at that lake house made for a wonderful convalescence from the first couple of months of schoolwork at Sciences Po.

From Lac de Serre-Ponçcon we drove to Grenoble via a small town named Briançon. Briançon is very much an Alpine town, quite near the border of northern Italy (the signs there were largely bilingual and the architecture notably Italian). It is small, quiet and charming, the town itself dominated by la Collegiale de Notre Dame et St Nicolas, a beautiful church, and the mountain above it dominated by fortifications built to defend the area from invasion from the east and since become cultural and historical landmarks. We were only able to stay in Briançon for a couple of hours before we had to leave for Grenoble, but it definitely was apparent from what little time we spent there that one could easily spend much longer taking in its particular prettiness, especially lit up at night.

We arrived at Grenoble late that evening.

The next morning, we took the little egg-shaped cable cars up the side of the mountain to the Bastille. This is not the fort-turned-prison that the French revolutionaries tore down on 14 July, 1789 (Bastille Day; the semi-equivalent of the American 4th of July), but is, rather, a mountain fortress (before "bastille" came to be associated with the Bastille in Paris, it only signified a fortress, generally) and an accompanying network of mountain caves that overlook the city, key components of the French alpine defense. There was a neat little military museum at the top that we visited briefly before hiking down the side of the freezing and fog-shrouded mountain.

The rest of the day was spent walking through the streets of Grenoble, which were definitely different from those of Paris. For one thing, all of the public transit is above ground because the rock is less-than-conducive to subway construction; tramways dominate the city and, along with the gardens and semi-classical architecture (Grenoble is one of the oldest cities in France, dating to BC times), rightly gives it an antiquated feeling.

I definitely would have enjoyed spending more time there but had to leave shortly after dinner. My train was 1/2 hour late, but Louise and my newfound friends were kind enough to wait with me in the freezing rain until it finally arrived to take me back to Paris.

Visits from "the South"


Soon after I returned to Paris, I was visited by four University of Georgians (Universityans of Georgia?) who were studying abroad in Oxford, across the way. Two of them - Anisha and Blake - I knew quite well, and two I hadn't yet met. They had all four come to Paris to see what they could see, as quickly as possible, in four short days, and that I got to see them for two of those was a real pleasure.

Anisha, Blake and I passed a wonderful together eating a typically French meal (escargot, salmon, salad, duck, etc) in a typically French manner (ie, a quite paced manner; it took us somewhere around three hours to finish, I think). It was a wonderful meal (the first time I had ever been intentional to eat at a truly French restaurant) and it was a joy to be able to share with them a little of the past few months in Paris for me and, even more so, to hear from them the highs and lows of Oxford. More than anything, it was just good to see some familiar faces after a few months without familiar contacts.

The next day, all five of us UGA-ers met up for crêpes/waffles/gelato by Fontaine St. Michel for their final night in Paris; again, it was good to pass time among familiar friends, faces, and topics of conversation.

A short while later, I got to pass the evening with Howell, a friend from UGA who was visiting Paris, hearing from him the news around campus and sharing with him some of the highlights from my time thus far in France.

All in all, those few visits were enough to give me a bit of a taste of Georgia. I needed them/appreciated them more than I realized at the time, I think, given how long it had been since I had been without any semblance of familiarity. As much as I enjoy travel, new sights, and new experiences, and as much as these things are important and valuable, I do miss good ol' UGA at the same time.

A Southern Thanksgiving meets a French dinner party


One of my main extra-curricular/personal projects I had for this semester was to prepare a Thanksgiving feast to celebrate with some of the French friends I have been able to get to know since arriving a few months ago.

I had decided on doing this since mid-October, or so, and, since early November had been in the process of planning and gathering ingredients (some of which, like cranberries, which are indigenous to the Americas, are somewhat exotic in France, and thus take some time to locate).

Thus it was that, with some help of a missionary here in France, my landlord and his wife, and some others from 72 Sèvres (the church that I attend) - to say nothing of the numerous phone calls back home to mom and the many hours spent on various homemaking websites (I learned more than I ever wanted to know about green bean casseroles) - that I had a pretty serious operation planned for the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

The menu, as I planned it, incorporated at least a few Southern tastes: Turkey, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, carrots, peas, Southern-style sweet tea, Coca Cola, and cider, with pumpkin pie and whipped cream for dessert. It promised to be a real feast, large enough to be French lunch and dinner, and, thus, eaten in the afternoon (much to the confusion of many of my guests, actually, who are accustomed to eating lunch at 13h00 and dinner at 20h00).

Though I faced a few serious setbacks during the morning cooking and more than one challenge threatened the success of the whole meal (such as molded carrots and a literal run to the grocery store to buy some more, the continually-clumpy gravy that I couldn't mix with a fork no matter how many times I tried, and other hilarities), it nevertheless turned out to be an edible, and, in some ways, even enjoyable menu with some really good conversation and cultural exchanges.

Explaining the history of Thanksgiving, the size of wild turkeys, the various North American and specifically Southern traditions, and some of the menu items (Pumpkin Pie, above all, was absolutely unknown to most of them, and cranberries were truly exotic to everyone there) to my French guests was an honor, and I hope I represented one of my favorite holidays mostly accurately. In any rate, beyond the bumbling French explanations of American and Canadian cultural traditions, the meal and the many hours of cards that we played afterwards passed well, to the extent that I would call my first Thanksgiving away from home a success (to which no small amount of credit goes to the aforementioned people who helped me).

On that note, let me just say to my many faithful readers, friends and family, Canadians, Yankees and Suth'ners, one and all, then, that I wish you each and every one an ex-post Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry start of the wonderful Advent season. Hopefully I’ll be able to be a bit better about updating with shorter, more frequent posts over the winter break.

Joseph