Ma Vie en Rose
By
Tamara Dunn
Perspectives Editor
“I have seen
the world so large,” I wrote in my travel journal after my magical
candlelight visit to Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte.
Well, in actuality I have seen about 62 percent of Paris and bits and
pieces of France and a few key spots in and around London. No matter
where you go abroad, or how much traveling you do while there, you return
with this sense of having witnessed the sky widen and having widened
yourself with the mere appreciation of such expanse. I have heard some
speak of Vienna with that glistening reminiscence. For others it may
have been Florence or Hong Kong. For me, it was and will ever be Paris.
My heart was set on Paris as it has been and continues to be such an
artistic center. As one of the university’s study abroad programs
is located in Dijon, I chose Well’s College Program for the Arts
in Paris. It was perfect for me. My focus on art had never been so intense.
I took painting, photography and Impressionism classes, but the history
of creativity and the omnipresent art world in Paris penetrated my daily
life. In class, I ground my own pigment to make oil paint just as the
old masters did. Then I chose a museum for the day and enjoyed the right
of every certifiable art student to enter French museums for free. I
was immersed in the language, the culture and the art.
One of the key elements of my experience was the opportunity to copy
in the Louvre. The long tradition of painting master’s recreations
for the purposes of technical study includes such creative greats as
Delacroix and Manet. It seemed surreal that I should be granted an easel.
The building itself is awe-striking. The size and the overwhelming number
of works within are magically traumatic. It is so much more than you
and within an hour or two, it becomes too much for you. I made the two
days a week I spent on the second floor of Sully all the more unbelievable
by pumping Jimi Hendrix, Tori Amos, Bob Dylan and Lauryn Hill through
my Walkman while applying the glazes on my painting. I half expected
the guards to interrupt me and regretfully inform me that Lynrd Skynrd
is prohibited within earshot of masterpieces. I think they were too
humored with catching me bust a few moves in between waves of tourists.
Playing the part of the stupid American excused some such behaviors.
It was a role I had to learn to embrace. Whenever I did something asinine,
my housemother, Djamila, uttered “Qu’est-ce que tu as, Shannon,”
as in, “What’s wrong?” However, the look on her face
would always add “with you?” I wretched at the thought that
I was classified in the same group as some of the sore thumb, locust-like
Americans we saw. Nonetheless, my mistakes fitted perfectly with the
stereotypes. I missed trains, misheard and mispronounced my butchered
French, got lost, miscalculated military time, and questioned my intelligence
on a daily basis. I missed all of the comforts of routine. In them,
there was far less room for error, and error was where I might as well
set up camp and buy a burial plot. However, that is the great challenge
that incites us to grow and compensate for our personal shortcomings
and human fallibility.
You cram your way through the university and believe you learned a great
deal, and you did. However, stepping outside of this bubble is the fastest
way to pop it. The more you see, the smaller your knowledge appears
in comparison. The wealth of places and images you encounter in a foreign
city revive your proud and complacent mind. An experience abroad can
open you up to a new perception of the world, your small place in it,
and, thus, a new way of living. “During my four months in Spain,
I realized the value of slowing down enough to enjoy the beauty of life,”
said junior Emily Wilson. “By making a habit of chatting with friends
in the warm golden glow of the Plaza Mayor at sunset, I realized there’s
more to success and happiness than checking tasks off my to-do list.”
I believe that what I learned while abroad will remain fresh in my memory.
It was not so much that I learned it but that I lived it. Sandra Kwok-Silve
— commonly referred to as Kwoky, maybe because she does bear some
resemblance to the cuteness and cuddliness of an Ewok — taught
my History of Impressionism class. It was held in her gorgeous apartment
on the Rue de Turin. The building itself was designed and built in the
age of Impressionism so she teaches there to facilitate a kind of atmospheric
time warp. We passed Manet’s old studio every time we walked to
the bus stop on our way to the Musée d’Orsay. She had us
trim her 30-year-old master palm tree with Christmas ornaments prior
to our final project presentations to ease our stress. She is a self-professed
marshmallow, something so contrary to university professors, which made
her sage-like tone and invitation for our personal opinions all the
more stimulating. We wrote our midterm essays sitting on the floors
of the Musée Marmottan looking at the very Monet paintings we
were comparing. That class was the most enjoyable and perhaps the most
profitable of my education thus far.
I understand junior Harriet Gilmore, who studied in Sydney, Australia
and plans to go abroad again, when she advises that “Going abroad
is the best thing you can do while in college, and I would tell anyone
to go as many times as possible.” It is difficult to express to
someone who hasn’t suffered, survived and smiled under such circumstances
how much they mean; yet, I hope I shed some light on the subject and
inspire others to go and comprehend for themselves.
Upon leaving, I was as stressed at the task of packing as I was upset
to be leaving. Taking a half hour out of my second to last day to cry,
it occurred to me that I may not have recognized all my blessings. I
had catalogued precious events in my personal history, and to fear that
they would fade would be to underestimate their impact. I remembered
the elderly lady on the metro who smiled at me as I brushed her knee
as I clamored into the window seat. I watched her wrinkled fingers worked
over her rosaries from Invalides to Plaisance. She was beautiful. It
was beautiful. There were countless miracles that kept me pushing forth
through transportation strikes, political “manifestations,”
lingual limitations and a day of rain for every two days of sunshine.
Surprisingly, one of the greatest treats of going abroad was appreciating
my return. I esteemed my family, friends and the comforts of home as
dear to me before I left. In missing them, I benefited from an appraisal
of their contributions on a truer scale. I also gained the opportunity
to share my experience with my loved ones as well as fellow students
who treasure similar adventures. It may sound slightly cult-like, but
I think we enjoy hearing that far-off recognizance in the tenor of each
other’s tales.
If you have ventured outside of your country or even just outside of
your comforts, you may understand my nostalgia for a time taught me
so much, transformed me so greatly and yet anchored me within myself
so strongly. I hope to visit someday and still hold some unlikely hope
that I might find some employed excuse to go back for a year. If you
had a time anything like mine, you revisit it on a daily basis drawing
from a library of a thousand little things it changed, challenged, and
redefined in you. My semester abroad schooled me as a student, an artist
and as a human being.
