French possibilities

Well, currently I'm waiting for my family to come back so we can go to the Aviation Museum (slightly random?). Yesterday we went with other students in the program to Giverny, home of Monet's garden. I had a mixed reaction with the place; of course it was beautiful, but it was so crammed with tourists taking pictures of the waterlilies and from his bedroom window that it was easy to forget the significance of the location.

I tried to tune out the tourists, the cameras, the English around me and imagine what it was like in Monet's time. He lived there with his wife and eight children, not to mention a menagerie of gardeners (they say four just for the lilies). Monet would work on maybe six different paintings simultaneously because he knew that the change in light made all the difference, going out to the garden and stopping when he noticed that the shadows weren't the same anymore. In his time, there was no museum, no gift shop, no café around the corner. You couldn't hear the cars from the busy street leading into the otherwise sleepy town of Giverny. It would have just been him and the flowers.

There is a tension in France - as with most historic-yet-developed countries, I suppose - between the traditional and modern advancement. On the crumbling, stone houses in the town, satellite dishes hung on the chimneys and compact cars were parked in the driveways. We drove to Giverny on a giant tour bus, following a highway about two hours from Paris. Of course all cities have to keep up with the times, but it was strange to remark the dichotomy.

 

Last night, after eating a dinner of brie and fig jam (and other things) I'd bought from the supermarket, the three of us went to the neighbor's apartment for a little party/art installation. After small talk and walking around the room, looking at the paintings on the walls, the artist put on an amazing performance. She read poetry and sang in French, accompanied by guitar and a slide show of abstract images that she had painted. It was lovely. Also exciting to be able to understand the majority of what she said. Afterwards, a few of us went out and roamed the streets of Paris like the crazy American tourists we were.

I'm still frustrated by my speaking capability (which isn't helped by being around the other American students, all speaking English). And I still haven't painted in Paris, but I guess I have seven weeks.