le week-end
My bike broke. I'm the saddest girl in Paris. A couple of the spokes on the back wheel came off and now it shakes pretty uncontrollably when I ride it. I left it at the Métro Pereire and I'll go back out there Monday with some tools to see about taking it off to get a new one.
Other than that, this weekend was perfect. Friday night I went to a liberal franco/anglophone synagogue for Shabbat. The service was about half Hebrew, 1/4 French and 1/4 English, and everything I was looking for: a small, welcoming congregation from all over the world, who all knew and sang and clapped to the same songs I've been singing my whole life, and where else in the world can a baby cry in a room full of people with the result that everyone in the room looks over and smiles at the presence of new young life? There was also this part with all of these readings, a call-and-response part, and it was all written in these homemade siddurs in French and English, and the Rabbi just asked anyone to read a paragraph when they felt like it, either in French or in English. Afterwards I met some people at the Oneg-- some of the congregants and the Rabbi got really excited to introduce everyone who was a student to everyone else who was a student.. Anyway, I plan to go back.
[In-between these two things was the catastrophic realization that my bike was no longer ride-able.]
So I took the métro to a small dinner party with some other BU kids and we went out to a bar/café which somehow managed to be hip and smoky and full of beautiful people without being pretentious. It looked like this, only less grainy in real life:
Then yesterday I went to shoot a protest march against the death penalty.
(Peine de mort isn't practiced here, but on Wednesday the Sénat is going to decide whether to write that it is forbidden into the Constitution). Running around in the cold on one of the only sunny days since I've been here--look at the clearest blue sky since I've been here:
with my camera and notebook, talking to people about what they are doing and why and how they got involved made me feel more like myself than I have since I've been here. My photos aren't great but they're not bad. Anyway, marches are tough (moving people, traffic, bright sunlight) and it was my first time using French to get caption information (with success!) It's a shame that it took me this long (1) to shoot an actual event and (2) to feel like myself. I mean, I could beat myself up over it or I could make a hundred decent excuses but none of that is the point. I feel Jewish again and I feel journalistic again-- both of these things give me a certain way of relating to and interacting with and experiencing the world and my community, and life's good.
Except for the 3 midterms on Tuesday that I'm avoiding studying for by playing with pictures and writing in my blog and listening to French radio and drinking Reglisse-menth tea.......
Other than that, this weekend was perfect. Friday night I went to a liberal franco/anglophone synagogue for Shabbat. The service was about half Hebrew, 1/4 French and 1/4 English, and everything I was looking for: a small, welcoming congregation from all over the world, who all knew and sang and clapped to the same songs I've been singing my whole life, and where else in the world can a baby cry in a room full of people with the result that everyone in the room looks over and smiles at the presence of new young life? There was also this part with all of these readings, a call-and-response part, and it was all written in these homemade siddurs in French and English, and the Rabbi just asked anyone to read a paragraph when they felt like it, either in French or in English. Afterwards I met some people at the Oneg-- some of the congregants and the Rabbi got really excited to introduce everyone who was a student to everyone else who was a student.. Anyway, I plan to go back.
[In-between these two things was the catastrophic realization that my bike was no longer ride-able.]
So I took the métro to a small dinner party with some other BU kids and we went out to a bar/café which somehow managed to be hip and smoky and full of beautiful people without being pretentious. It looked like this, only less grainy in real life:
Then yesterday I went to shoot a protest march against the death penalty.
(Peine de mort isn't practiced here, but on Wednesday the Sénat is going to decide whether to write that it is forbidden into the Constitution). Running around in the cold on one of the only sunny days since I've been here--look at the clearest blue sky since I've been here:
with my camera and notebook, talking to people about what they are doing and why and how they got involved made me feel more like myself than I have since I've been here. My photos aren't great but they're not bad. Anyway, marches are tough (moving people, traffic, bright sunlight) and it was my first time using French to get caption information (with success!) It's a shame that it took me this long (1) to shoot an actual event and (2) to feel like myself. I mean, I could beat myself up over it or I could make a hundred decent excuses but none of that is the point. I feel Jewish again and I feel journalistic again-- both of these things give me a certain way of relating to and interacting with and experiencing the world and my community, and life's good.
Except for the 3 midterms on Tuesday that I'm avoiding studying for by playing with pictures and writing in my blog and listening to French radio and drinking Reglisse-menth tea.......
posted by Sarah Beth Glicksteen at 7:59 AM
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