Dans les Voooooooosges

Though rumor has it that the film festival this year is at an all-time low due to lack of sponsors/funding, there nevertheless may be a couple of heavy-hitting movies. Looking at some of the festival's past winners, I'm hoping I may have just seen the next "28 Days Later" (which in my opinion is a great zombie movie):

1997: Scream
1998: An American Werewolf in Paris (Grand Prix), Gattaca (Jury)
1999: Cube (Grand Prix), Bride of Chucky (Jury)
2000: Stir of Echoes
2003: The Gathering (Jury)
2005: Saw (2005)
2006: Isolation
2008: El Orfanato (Grand Prix), Teeth (Jury), REC (Prix du Public)
2009: The Midnight Meat Train (Prix du Public) <--why did I never see this?

Cool, huh? I saw "La Horde" last night, the only French horror film in competition, but that certainly is not going to win a thing -- what a waste of cinema. "La Horde": machine guns, zombies, a braless woman.

Tomorrow I'm going on another "sortie" with the alpine club: raquette (snowshoeing)! Apparently, the conditions are going to be fantastic: less blizzarding, deep, powdery snow, maybe even a little sun. I've always thought of snowshoeing as one of those silly sports that people do when it's not really necessary (as in, why would you strap a couple of tennis raquets on your feet when you could just go on a hike?). But since there's likely to be waist-high snow out there tomorrow...

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To give you city-dwelling ignoramuses an idea of what mountain-bound French people eat, here are some very tradtional Vosges dishes that I haven't talked about much since they're not really up my cuisine alley (my cuisine alley?):

Quiche Lorraine: eggs, cheese, lardons

Raclette: cheese, potatoes, ham

 

Tartiflette: cheese, potatoes, lardons

Tarte Flambee: cream, onions, lardons

 

Tourte Lorraine: meat

The variety is astounding!

Monolith

I spent my birthday evening volunteering at the film festival, and was lucky enough to see a free screening of "2001: A Space Odyssey," one of my all-time favorite movies. Here's a clip of the high-speed-time-warp-mind-numbing sequence, possibly one of the best 9 minutes of cinema ever created:

The Rachel Show

I was mad last Sunday and went on a four hour hike in the snow:

 

I got my wisdom teeth taken out:

 

I read some French fables:

Where am I? What am I doing?

Idiots and Computers

I just read this article about mistakes in radiation therapy -- and how most of them are due to software problems. I'd love to blame the technology, but it's the people, of course: the radiation therapists who aren't looking at the screen, the doctors who aren't checking the patient's weekly doses, the computer programmers who haven't built an emergency/fail-safe mechanism into the software. The article is horrifying and takes awhile to read, but I feel strangely moved and fired up after having read it. People are morons. Morons, morons.

Bacteria

So besides coming down with le gastro (stomach flu... it's what you get when you have a student vomiting into a bucket in your classroom) this week, this is what else I've been doing:

Making naan! (my yogurt days are over)

 

Looking out my window

Enjoying the art on my wall

In other words, not much. But January is always a slow month, and so I should probably consider myself lucky to have its temporal viscosity broken up by illness, dentistry, and the annual Gerardmer Film Festival:

...at which I'll be working as a volunteer English translator for all the overseas tourists, directors, producers, whomever that can't speak French. Maybe Miley Cyrus will show up!

Happy Birthday, from France

Forgot to mention: I'm getting my wisdom tooth out next week.

Yes, just one tooth, in the dentist's office, with a little novicaine and no pain medication, because that's how all wisdom teeth are removed in France. AND FOR FREE.

I think I also want to get the rest of my wisdom teeth unnecessarily pulled, get my appendix out, and get a pair of rec specs while I'm at it.

RE:

Another video you don't have to watch per se, but should probably have projecting on the living room wall of your next house party:

Feels

FEELS... on a number of levels.

I've been listening to the Animal Collective album "Feels" a lot lately, one of their early-ish experimental albums/bonus discs. Here's a video to a live version of "Banshee Beats" played at Coachella 2006, which I'm not asking you to watch (it's more than 9 minutes long and poorly shot) but at least just minimize it and have a listen:



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I'm becoming less dexterous. As in, I'm developping mountain man hands and losing my ability to do small movements with my fingers, like untie shoes and play the violin. When in Rome, right? That's what I thought… I just hope it's not permanent.

Rock climbing + skiing + wielding hiking poles + using pitchforks = super grip, poor needlepoint skills.

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Digital deformities. I've seen several people in town with missing fingers, malformed fingers (one of my teachers has a left thumb that wants to be two, badly), entire hands gone. I've probably seen about six different people in Gerardmer alone that have these… problems. Shrinking gene pool, too much wood chopping, or both?

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Proof

Some pictures that my neighbor took of me during our mountaineering trip that I would normally think of as creepy but of which I am instead appreciative because I have no other photographic evidence of my first excursion into the Vosges tundra:

before heading out

 

on our way to la crete (the crest)

learning how to walk sideways up the snow

 

practicing falling and catching myself with the icepick

dying

i'm the one in grey

a shady shot through the trees... a well-captured memory nonetheless

 

This is the first day of the rest of my life

...or at least the rest of my time in France, most likely. The snow has officially hit the Vosges enough for winter sports to be fully underway, and will probably be here until I leave in April. Some ways I've started to adapt/force myself into this below-freezing environment:

1. WWOOFing. I went back again to Susanne's farm this Wednesday and hacked at frozen piles of horse manure with a pickaxe for a couple hours. I was fed a hearty breakfast and lunch and given a half hour-long German lesson. It's a start.

2. Hiking. Some good old-fashioned marching in the snow. I went, also this past Wednesday (it was a long, cold day), on a short hike through the ski pistes with my neighbors, Isabelle and Alain, who are insanely fit, incredibly friendly, indelibly outdoorsy (okay okay...). I work with them at school and go climbing with both of them on Tuesdays at the rock wall (needless to say, they're middle-aged). They lent me a ton of equipment, since I have ni boots ni clothes ni special accoutrements, like hiking poles or a day pack. They also feed me sometimes, which is nice.

3. Skiing. I started yesterday with ski de fond (cross-country skiing), which involves very thin skis, very small hills, and a lot of balance. It's different from downhill skiing in that you start on flat ground and have your heels free (only your toes are clipped in). You kind of march/slide on flat ground, clip-clop with your skiis splayed out like duck's feet while going uphill, and ride downhill with parallel skiis. No slaloming! Or you'll eat it, like I did about five times.

4. Alpinisme (mountaineering). The nuttiest seasonal adaptation of mine thus far. Today was my first official outing with le club alpin francais des Vosges -- the same club that I do rock climbing with every Tuesday. In short, mountaineering involves a helmet, ice picks, crampons, multiple layers of Gore-Tex (thanks Scott! I was mad warm out there today), and some ropes. We went to the highest point in the Vosges, Le Hohneck, and started out by descending into a small (but steep!) valley. After a few exercises -- practicing falling down and catching yourself with your ice pick, practicing going uphill, downhill, etc. -- we started climbing up the other side of the valley, using our ice picks as crutches and digging our crampons into the ice and frozen shrubbery. I'm more exhausted than I have ever been in my life; my muscles are sore to the touch, and I'm spattered with bruises (mostly from skiing yesterday, though). And I didn't take this picture, but this is really what it looked like today, just with some trees:

More than anything, these sports have made me realize what we -- humans -- can do when we have no choice. Exhausted, but you're halfway up a mountain? Too bad; keep climbing. Scared to death to scamper down that slope? Oh well, there goes everyone else. Of course, I didn't want to be a chochotte (wimp) so I didn't say anything, but I was pretty scared most of the time. Yet being scared combined with exhaustion makes for a goal-oriented animal, you know? Maybe by "goal-oriented" I mean "desperate."

Finally, some food for thought (thanks, Danny): colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

COTW

I already ate the whole thing, but it was good enough to document: Tourteau Fromager de Poitou:

It's really a gateau made with cheese, but since I found it in the cheese section of the grocery store, I'm counting it. It's a special kind of cake made in the Poitou-Charentes region of France that's eaten on weddings or special occasions, though the instructions on the box tell me I can eat it whenever I want!

While I'm on the topic of exciting dairy news, let me introduce you to thiakry, a Senegalese dessert that I discovered on my last day in Paris at an awesome West African restaurant. I liked it so much that I asked the owner what was in it, and then I made it myself:

It's normally made with a type of black Senegalese couscous that's of course impossible to find in Vosgien grocery stores, so I made it with a quinoa/white couscous/bulgur mix, and sweetened it with honey instead of sugar.

Sure it's great to cook new things, but what I really want to be doing is THIS:

Eff that.

I didn't make a New Year's resolution this year because I think they're silly. Instead, I'm making a list of all the very seriously excellent things that have happened in my life since last January (in no particular order). We'll figure out this upcoming year later.

1. Graduated college
2. Moved to France
3. Saw awesome live music (Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective, Busy P, Armin van Buuren, The Roots)!
4. Went on some great roadtrips (Potsdam, Caravan)
5. Fell in love!
6. Became a vegetarian for realz
7. Saw the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama
8. Visited the Mediterranean coast
9. Changed my beauty/body lifestyle -- started making my own shampoo, abandoned lotion, let my hair grow out…
10. WWOOFed (more serious WWOOFing adventures to come in February)

On a smaller scale, I've had other successes in the past year as well, like taking up some new hobbies (rock climbing, hiking, cycling), starting to learn another language (German), reading all the books I've been meaning to read for years, getting my first paid piece of writing published. And there are all sorts of things currently in the works -- graduate school, living in New York, a reunion with my friends from Australia (Brussels in April!), a halfway-crocheted alpaca scarf that's been sitting on my desk waiting to be finished. 2009 was awesome, en effet!

It amuses me, makes me happy, and allows me to realize the inevitable mutability of the human mind that, after each passing year, I'm convinced I've had the best year ever.

Thoughts, by Rachel

I've wasted a lot of money discovering things. I mean, I've learned a lot.

My sisters are the coolest people on the planet.

Go see Max et les Maximonstres ("Where The Wild Things Are")!

I don't like places that pride themselves on luxury.

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Aside from the tooth affair in Strasbourg and the brief food poisoning episode in Paris (fennel or pizza, we'll never know), les vacances were a success. I made it to the City of Lights on time and with all of my wisdom teeth intact, and promptly began what is thus far the most stereotypically touristic, ridiculous family vacation of my short little life. The highs were high (group hug atop the Arc de Triomphe, family dogpile, sister soirees), the lows low (the after-dinner cheese incident, tearful mother-daughter misunderstandings, pathetic New Year's Eve), the French mispronunciations severe.

But the "bon-swahs" aside ("is it 'soir' already? Damn" - Emily), the trip was a wonderful time warp that effectively threw me back into city mode and suddenly made the serenity of the Vosges seem tiresome (and so cold!). It all comes down to diversity -- diversity of age, color, size, shape, expression, style, culture, cuisine. I miss seeing people my own age; I miss hearing different kinds of music and smelling exotic smells; I miss feeling like I'm part of a community.

Mais pourtant, there's nothing I can do about it except continue to make the most out of my surroundings and not turn into a puddle of self-pitying sludge. There's still something awesome about eating locally, having mountains in my backyard, and living the slow life, since I almost certainly won't have access to any of these things once I return stateside. And that's how this whole thing works, right? Have something great, lose it, learn something, turn what you have into something else great, become a better, stronger person? Alchemy.

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Highlights from Strasbourg, la capitale de Noel:

 

 

 

And from Paris, city of lights, city of love, city of lost tourists -- the major attractions:

 

[inside Notre Dame]

 

[the Louvre]

[la Tour Eiffel]

 

[Sacre Coeur]

 

[Moulin Rouge]

 

[cimetiere Montparnasse]

…the art:

[@ the Louvre]

 [@ the Museum of Modern Art]

 [@ the Louvre]

 

[inside the Arc de Triomphe]

…the other cool stuff:

[close-up fleur-de-lis]

 

[Foucault's pendulum, @ the Pantheon]

 

 [driver's view in the metro]

…the fam:

[the treeeeeee]

[the sisters]

[the Smuckers do Paris, '09]

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Here goes France part two!