Happy Thanksgiving!

After eating a huge Thanksgiving meal with my mom and dad and a family friend, I thought I’d write a blog post to keep myself awake. This year, I am really thankful for my family, friends, possibilities for the future, good food, French wine, dark chocolate, naps, my parents’ dogs, music, all the things I am learning at the moment, and a little time to relax! I hope you are thinking about all that is good in your life as well – even if it’s just the little things. Happy Thanksgiving!

Indianapolis Symphony

Last night, I went to the “French night” at the Indianapolis Symphony with the French Club from Jeff. They plan this event specifically for high school students who are studying French, and they start the evening with a tour of the theatre and explanation of the architecture and decor and then one of the musicians speaks to the students about the music they will play that evening. We were really fortunate to hear from one of the first chair violinists about the show last night, and he did a really wonderful job of describing the music and giving us certain things to listen for throughout the evening. One thing that he said which really struck me was that French music has a certain beauty – and all the other elements of the music are sort of subordinate or contribute to that beauty. He talked about Spanish music and how it is amazingly coloful and vibrant, but French music is more subtle and has an overall beauty. It really prepared me as a listener for the actual music, and I was really able to appreciate Debussey, Ravel and Berlioz that much more because of this really fascinating introduction. We were also really fortunate to hear an extremely talented solo violinist who was there as a guest for a few days perform a really complicated piece by a Polish composer, I believe. It was really quite stunning. It was just a great evening, and I’m really glad that places like the Indianapolis Symphony offer these amazing opportunities to high school students.

sunday update

So, I don’t have too much to report… but I thought I should try to update this thing weekly if I can. It’s really frightening how quickly this semester is coming to an end. I don’t really feel ready to leave university life yet, so grad school is seeming more and more appealing to me. I’m also pretty excited to teach French one day, but we will just have to see what happens I guess.

I got a text message from England this weekend, that was a nice surprise.  Technology is pretty amazing, I must say, even if it perplexes us most of the time. School is going fairly well at the moment, busy as usual, but I’ve been reading some pretty interesting things lately. I’m taking a really interesting class about short stories, and I’m also enjoying my history of the French language course (even if it’s quite intimidating at times).

I’m pretty excited that Wall-E comes out on video soon. You should rent it if you haven’t seen it, I think it’s definitely worth it. Alors, je n’ai pas vraiment d’autres nouvelles. Juste un mot de Baudelaire pour vous faire réfléchir… ”Qui donc devant l’amour ose parler d’enfer?” Bien intéressant.

teaching

First of all, sorry for my last post… I am busy, but not that busy. I think I was just having a mini mental breakdown because of school. Actually, things are going pretty well, I really can’t complain too much. I’m really enjoying my feild observations at Jeff and helping with the students in the French classes there. Yesterday, I went to a conference in Indianapolis for teachers of foreign languages, and it was really helpful – I got some free textbooks and materials which will be really helpful for teaching French. So I guess it’s just hitting me right now how close I am to graduation and how torn I am about going to grad school or starting to teach right away. I honestly want to do both, and I can’t seem to decide what to do next year, so if you’d like to offer any advice I would welcome it.

I don’t really have too much to offer as news from my life, but my sister did find out that she will be having a boy (and she refuses to tell us his name until he is born). So that is pretty exciting – I can’t wait to see him!  

Also, how is already November?? Life is going by much too quickly.