2010: c'est parti !!

Bonne Année à tous et à toutes !!  :)

Unfortunately, the first few days of 2010 consisted of a lot of research and then writing of my Italian paper; let's cross our fingers that it pays off!  I did see several movies over the vacation, including Les Chats Persans, "No One Knows About Persan Cats" in English, which I strongly recommend.  It's based on a true story about some young people trying to start a music group in Iran, where unfortunately this requires lots of bureaucratic obstacles and fulfilling of national/religious standards.  Anyway, the montages of Teheran are beautiful and moving and I very much enjoyed listening to the beautiful language.  Best Foreign Film Oscar, anyone?  We'll see...

On Tuesday I said au revoir to Roxane, my French friend who is studying at UT Austin this semester.  I sent her off with a crisp 10 USD bill, "valid only" at my favorite coffee shop.  She just arrived in the States today; I'm very interested to hear all about her journey when she returns in May!!

Other than studying and seeing friends and movies, the only other thing that really happened last week was...drum roll please...New Year's Eve!  I started off the evening with some champagne and snacks with my group of American friends, then went out to dinner with my Italian friends Zina, Stefania, and Andrea, our Austrian friend Sandra, a newbie french guy named Alexandre...and 2380234 girls from Rome who were visiting Zina for the holidays.  Alright, so it was more like 10, but boy was I surprised to walk into the restaurant and see everyone seated at the biggest table!  We went to an Italian place, of course, and the dinner was really fun and lively (with Italians, how else could it be?).  After dinner, we tried to make it to the Champs de Mars to see the light show on the Eiffel Tower - unfortunately (but not really surprisingly) the metro was ridiculously crowded, and with all the girls in heels, walking was out of the question, so we ended up watching the show from the Place de la Concorde, which was more reasonably populated than both the metro and, from what I hear, the Champs de Mars, the only downside being that we could only see about half the illuminated side of the Tower.  At midnight the whole thing started glittering, shouts were heard from every direction, and we popped open our bottles of champagne.  Afterwards we wandered a bit between a couple of parties, one of which was in the Latin Quarter in an old apartment occupied by "squatters" (friends of Alexandre).  The atmosphere there - a dimly-lit room frequented by fashionably dressed students smoking cigarettes and engaged in intellectual conversation - felt so 60s-Paris.  The least enjoyable part of the night was definitely getting home since only a few metro stations remained open all night and none of them were too convenient for where we were.  Finding a taxi was next to impossible since they were all occupied (and apparently the majority go out to the suburbs on New Year's Eve?) and my friend Sandra and I ended up walking to my place, where she stayed with me.  I guess that sounds like a pretty dangerous solution, but we were in a nice, busy part of town, on major streets....and we were desperate to find a warm bed!  We weren't the only ones that had problems -- at one point we stopped at a bus stop where at least two dozen people appeared to be waiting for a bus.  I asked one of them which bus they were waiting for.  "Actually," he said, "the buses aren't running right now."  "Then why are you waiting?" I asked.  "I don't know," he replied, before taking another swig of champagne.  Hmmm, Happy New Year!  I heard other stories of a gang releasing tear-gas on a metro platform and a swat team coming on one of the few operating metro lines to break up a fight ("ratp, on new year's eve, they don't play," one of my friends informed me).  I think the lesson learned here is to get as many of your friends together as possible, preferably in an apartment, and stay put for the night.  In other words, New Year's in Paris can sort of kick your ass! (Excuse my French).  Oh well, it was an interesting experience.

Yesterday normal life resumed again - with a 3 hour lecture on Italian-writer Ungaretti...at 8AM.  Ugh!  Luckily I only have one more week of classes this semester and then a couple of finals at the end of January.  The sad thing is that classes start again right away at the beginning of February!  Nonetheless, I'm trying to organize some traveling for this month, so cross your fingers and I'll keep you posted!  After a two-week absence during les vacances, I returned to English tutoring last night with the family of 3 girls.  I walked into the 6-year-old's room to find a frustrated Alice trying to assemble one of her Christmas presents, a big rocking cradle for her dolls.  She actually was doing pretty well, but even with my help, it took the better part of an hour to finish.  "This is what being an adult is like," I told her as she idly played with "Matilde" (her doll) while I broke a sweat forcing mysterious plastic objects together to form an even bigger plastic object.  Note to self: NEVER buy children's toys which require assembly.  Life's just too short.

Taking a page out of my friend Kenzie's book, I'll leave you with a letter I wrote to my dear adopted city:

Dear Paris,

Nice work bringing Mr. Sun out these last 2 days.  Now let's do something about that bone-chilling wind of yours.

Love,

Alina

PS.  I finished my facebook album, just in time for the new year!  Here it is - the New Year's photos start on page 9.