Hi All!!
Tomorrow is officially the last day of orientation, but I've got much to fill you in on about my week before I head down to the Ethnos Bar downstairs to hang out with some of the people in my building!
Allow me to sart at the beginning.
Saturday I got home from the château (see my previous post for those details), and rather than going out, due to the weather (cold and rainy), I made some warm milk, which I unfortunately needed to improvise... I'm used to mom's recipe of adding vanilla, but since I didn't have that I added a little bit of sugar and a tea packet for about a minute to give it an interesting flavor, and then I grabbed my Kindle and started to read "The Geneva Trap" so graciously purchased for me by dad. Sunday was pretty uneventful, I did homework all day (WELCOME TO MY LIFE).
MONDAY we went to the US Mission. Not trying to get policitical on here, but it sucked... I won't go into further detail unless you ask me. Let me just say that a room full of Smithies was not pleased with what we heard.... especially an inability to differentiate between consumerism and capitalism to say the least. But whatever. THat ceased to matter once we arrived at the OPERA. The building itself is this enormous 17th (?) century building, and the inside is even more impressive than out. It has guilded walls with intricate details and beautifully painted ceilings with HUGE chandaliers. I'll be posting those pics asap! We saw La Nozze de Figaro by Mozart, which is one of the most famous and revolutionary and important operas in history. It is one of the factors that helped spark the French Revolution (at least the original play by Beaumarché was... details in my head are foggy) due to its content. The main characters are peasants, who highlight the hypocritical and unjust nature of their master. The peasants are the protagonists. Not only that, but it is one of the most important opera's composition-wise, because neither before it or since has anyone been able to compose such an intricate yet perfect opera. There are seven (I think) main characters, and each has his own tune in his own key, yet when they all sing together, Mozart was able to combine these things to sound harmonious and beautiful. It was also one of the first opera's that had character development, a plot, and movement around the stage. I could not believe that we were there (even after being called low-class and bad mannered by one of our fellow Smithies...all of us were... for taking photos BEFORE THE PLAY STARTED but I've moved on). At intermission, our program director bought us all some DELICIOUS white wine, and all of us in our nice dresses sipped it amongst the other folks of "high society". It was an incredible experience, and we loved it so much that our director found us tickets to a ballet for Oct 6....... I CANT WAIT! Oh, did I mention that our director took her husband, who as I mentioned before, I absolutely ADORE?! She did.
The next day, those of us taking courses at the Grad INstitute visited it. It was amazing. It is such an inredible institution, and I hope one day to go back there to study. We got a tour of the buildings and the library which (i'm a sucker for libraries) BLEW ME AWAY. I'll be able to go there and do research to see if anyone has done anything relating to my thesis topic, and this will help me in my Fulbright application.
Here is my life plan now:
1) Graduate with honors (on account of my thesis)
2) Get a Fulbright to continue my research
3) Go to law school and study either constitutional or international law
4) [depending on if i study international law at law school] go back to the Grad Institute and get a PhD in international law.
Also, you can do a summer program there, which I'm trying to convince my parents to let me do... the programs range from 1-3 weeks. We'll see.
And then last night, the floor celebrated one of our floormate's birthdays, and we all made fajitas and drank wine, and us Smithies really got to know some of the other people in the building. It was great!
In fact, I"m going now to do the same thing.. Some people from our building are meeting up at the bar downstairs. I'm going to report on that when I can, but I'm fairly certain that it's going to be a great time!
à bientôt mes cheris
xx Edie