Contradancing and French Radio

I went contradancing last night for the first time in a very very long time. It was fun to go back again, dance with some old friends, and meet some new ones. I think I spent most of the evening laughing hilariously at the confusion running rampant in the sets in most of the dances. An example of how the evening went: we got there a little late, maybe at the second or third dance, which was a circle dance. The caller walked us through it, and got very confused at the end when she found we were facing our partners instead of next to them. We went through the whole thing again to see if we could figure out what was wrong, and eventually she just changed one of the moves in order for us to progress with our partner. We went through it again like that, and right before we actually started dancing the caller said, "Oh, it gets even better than this -- this dance is a mixer! So you're supposed to lose your partner! It was right all along!" It was very silly. Later in the evening she was trying to explain a snakey under-the-arch move in another dance that nobody was getting. When we finally got through it she told us the name of the dance and that it was written by Erik Hoffman. I thought, "No wonder nobody got it!" I love Erik's dances, but I think they're a little advanced for this particular contra crowd. :} All in all, I did have fun, and maybe I'll go back sooner next time. :P

I've been listening to French radio all morning, in an attempt at being able to pick out a word here and there and just getting used to hearing the language spoken. I poked around the internet for a while looking for radio stations. I tried a couple that advertised themselves as "popular with French youth" but they were utter crap. I eventually found Radio France's "France Bleu" which is actually pretty good. It's mostly music, mostly in French, but with a few songs in English here and there (Sting, Bob Marley, Ani DiFranco.) For the most part, I've been enjoying the music, but not understanding much. The annoying thing is, they don't seem to play anything all the way through. Of course, I couldn't tell with most of the French songs, but then they started up Gypsy by Suzanne Vega. I got all excited, because I love that song, but they cut it off halfway through and went on to something else! It's very strange. But anyway, it's kind of neat to be listening to, even though most of it simply washes over me.

My plans for France this summer continue to evolve in new directions. The newest revision of the plan is to go for two months rather than one, possibly changing locations, but most likely doing a "combination" program of one month in each of two locations, Annecy and Nice. Hugo has pointed out (and I have learned from my own research) that Nice is more of a tourist beach town than anything else, so it would be great for a vacation but not necessarily the most realistic view I could get of France. He says Annecy, on the Eastern border by the Swiss Alps, is "real France." Since WorldLink Education specifically offers and encourages combination programs, I figured I might as well go that route, and spend time in a couple of different places. I'm still trying to iron out the details, which is hard; I'm so excited about it all that I want to do everything, so it's hard to pare the summer down to something I'll actually be able to manage. :P

Flying Dream

Man, I had some incredible dreams last night. Including the longest and most intense flying dream I've ever had (which isn't saying much, since I haven't had that many, but it was all the more incredible for all that.) I actually wrote my dreams down when I woke up, so if you're in the mood for a story, read on...

Graham and I discovered a place to fly and devices that allowed us to fly – like little clip-on microphones with a battery pack that clipped to the belt. I'm not sure how or why these made it possible for us to fly, but they did. We were in an ice canyon; the walls were covered in sheets of ice, icicles, and ice-waterfalls, but it wasn’t cold except to the touch. We just flew and flew and explored. We knew we weren’t supposed to be there, but couldn’t help shouting out to each other about the beautiful things we saw. The flying was wonderful. Standing on the ground, I could just bend my legs and push off into the air, then be taken by an invisible force that buoyed me up. It was not wind, and I wasn’t blown or carried, but simply supported – I could fly anywhere I chose and know that I would not fall. If I paused at a canyon wall to investigate something I could anchor myself simply by touching the wall (and feeling that it really was ice), and begin flying again by turning around and gently pushing off.

The canyon was the perfect place for doing tricks. I dove towards the floor and pulled myself up with somersaults, flew on my back as if I were swimming under the surface of the ocean and looking up at the sun, twisted and turned and twirled and completely abandoned myself to the joy of flight. I don’t know for how long I flew, but I never tired.

And then I found the most beautiful place of all. I had made my way up to the canyon head, a shallower area, more like a shelf at the end of the canyon than anything else. I flew upwards to meet it and look over this new feature, and caught my breath. Before me was a garden. I can only call it that, though nobody had planted it and nobody ever tended it. Covering the shelf floor were many-colored plants that looked like coral, and many-colored coral that looked like plants. Everything was so still, it was impossible to tell the difference in the sea of greens and pinks and blues and reds and purples and oranges. They looked as though they’d been growing upwards for a very long way, because I could not see a hint of ground through the foliage. The back part of the garden was blanketed in snow, a deep, soft, fluffy snow that I knew would do no harm to the garden it covered. It was the boundary of this snow-patch, the place where the plants and coral began to peek their heads out of the melting snow and see sunlight again, that I found most breathtaking. Patches of snow alternated with patches of color, creating a brilliant mosaic of life. I called to Graham to come and share it with me.


The dream got fairly strange after that, as dreams are apt to do, but that part was so vivid that all the images and events were still in my mind when I woke up, surviving the dreams that followed and even the radio alarm clock. What a beautiful dream! I wonder where it came from...

Today was a rather short day where classes were concerned. My last class of the day (Environmental Health) was canceled -- a note from the professor outside the classroom read: "Dear Class, Due to a civil/legal issue (you don't want to know), I have to cancel class this evening." And went on to ask us to read up on biogeochemical cycles, etc. This, of course, has us all wondering what on earth he's gotten himself into in terms of a civil/legal situation (and of course made all the more curious by his mysterious "you don't want to know"). But it did give me some free time this afternoon, which was nice. I just wish I'd known about the cancelation earlier, because I'd taken the streetcar over to Powells to get some French books (dictionary, etc.), and then taken it all the way back to campus, when I could have hopped on in the other direction and been home 45 minutes earlier. But oh well. I still got home almost 2 hours before usual. This allowed me time to take a leisurely walk down to Food Front, the local co-op organic food etc. store a few blocks away. It's a nice store, and I get a very good feeling from buying (and eating, of course) organic foods. I also went for a jog this evening, for the first time in yonks. It was a very short jog, but it was good. I'll probably need that yoga class tomorrow morning. :}

Guess what came through my mail slot this morning -- my passport! That was quick! Now I just need a plane ticket and I can travel wherever I want. :P But first I need to figure out where to put my passport so I don't forget where it is.

I also got two more packages over the weekend, one from Mom and one from Monee. What did I ever do to deserve all this wonderful mail? Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but it seems like I've been getting an awful lot of wonderful packages recently.

I've been trying out a new (to me) yoga studio that's just a couple of blocks from my apartment. I went for the first time on Friday morning, and took Ellie with me, since she didn't have school and was interested in yoga (she'd done a bit mixed in with highschool PE, etc., but nothing serious). When we walked into the room, I thought we'd accidentally come to the "Hot Yoga" class -- the teacher had set the thermostat to 90°. She eventually turned it down, but not until we'd been sweating like pigs for 45 minutes. It was a rather tough class and Ellie nearly died, but she actually did pretty well. I went again today, and it was a different teacher, so the room was at a slightly more comfortable temperature, and I liked the workout better. One thing I like about this place is that all the classes are an hour and a half long, rather than just an hour, so there's time to do more postures without rushing through them. Right now I'm just doing their "intro special," one week of unlimited classes for $15, but after that I'll probably keep going. I like yoga. :)

Look what I found -- the website for the City of Nice! (This the English version; you can get to the French version if you really want to, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.) Looks like a nice place. :) They've actually got some pretty fun little pages of history, culture, ecology, and gastronomy (not kidding!). It seems the city has been undergoing some pretty heavy-duty clean-up and conservation-type restructuring, so things have gotten a lot, well, cleaner, I guess. Looks like the snorkelling should be good. I mean, the studying.... :P Anyway, check it out if you're curious -- I spent about an hour poking around this evening, but now I have to tear myself away to finish my reading for tomorrow.

I spent a couple of hours online yesterday looking for other French language programs in France for this summer, and actually found one that looks even better than the EF International Language School I mentioned in a previous post. The program is called WorldLink Education. They've got programs in various places in France (and other countries, too, of course), but the one I'm looking at is the one in Nice. (Hugo's got me hooked on this whole Nice thing.) The overall program is pretty much the same as the EF program and many others I've looked at; the main differences are that class sizes are very small (5-8, limited to 10), and just about everything is included in the program cost -- tuition, books, housing, insurance (which is extendable after the program for leisure travel), and all "excursions" and activities through the program are included. Most of the other programs I've looked at offer insurance and excursions "at a discounted program rate," but that means you still have to pay extra for them. The WorldLink Education (WLE) program is a bit more expensive than the EF program, but that's because the excursions, etc. are considered part of the course material. I figure that if I do the WLE program I'm much more likely to actually go on all the trips, since I won't have to consider each one from a financial standpoint and think I have to make the decision about whether or not I can afford to go. Because even if the trips are offered at "discounted" rates, I'm sure they still rack up pretty quickly.

So anyway, that's where I am with France at the moment. I'll most likely be staying with a host family, since it's cheaper than getting a studio (they charge extra for studios/apartments in the high season), and living with a French family is a really good way to get French ingrained into your system. I can choose the option to have my own room within a homestay or share a room with another student. I'll probably still go for the single room, just so I can have a bit of privacy. That's important to a Lacey.

Oh, and on an almost-but-not-quite random note -- I did a brief calculation and cost comparison of this language school and Stanford last night. I took one of my old Stanford bills (from Winter 2002, so I'm sure things have gone up considerably since then), added up the prices for tuition, housing and dining (leaving out health insurance, dorm fees, etc.), and divided by 3 to get the monthly cost -- it's over $1000 more than a month-long program through WLF. Yikes. I'm glad I'm going to PSU.

One last interesting note: I was talking with Graham yesterday, and he asked me what my angel card for the year was. Turns out it's very appropriate for everything that's going on for me this year -- Enthusiasm! Hooray! It's funny how angel cards work sometimes...

Wow! I had another package-ful day today! Gan mao ling from Graham, photos from Monee, and a card from Cass -- hooray! Thank you, everybody, I love you all!

So, as promised, here are further details of my future that have emerged from my plotting and scheming of the last week (and believe me, there's been a lot of that!) ....

So you know, if you read Tuesday's blog, that I changed my major, and dropped one of my ESR (Environmental Studies) classes and signed up for an anthro class in its place. Well, I dropped another ESR class (the uninspiring intro one with a terrible professor that encouraged us to be dumb). This brings me down to 12 units. I'm not going to sign up for another PSU class, but I'm certainly not going to waste that time. I'm designing my own French course, based on online tutorials, textbooks, audiotapes and tutors in the hopes of becoming at least marginally familiar with the French language before I go to France.

Now, onto the France bit. What I'm hoping... no, planning on doing is actually spending a good deal of the summer in France, starting with probably about a month of language school. I haven't quite figured out where I want to go yet; I still have a lot of research ahead of me. I picked up a bunch of catalogs and things from the International Studies department last week, and one of the programs that looks most intriguing is the EF International Language School in Nice (It's nice in Nice.) I would love to get some good language training there, and then stay in France for a while and travel and maybe do some sort of internship or volunteer work, but that's still a bit far away to think about concretely. The language school thing is definitely going to happen, though. I would really love to learn a language and have it actually stick with me. Also, if I do well enough, I'll be able to place out of some of the lower level French classes at PSU and come in at a higher level when I come back.

So, as you can see, I'm getting very excited about this whole thing. And I'm enjoying school and everything! (Did I mention I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays now?) It's all very exciting, and I'm thrilled! Okay, I'll stop now. :}