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I spent this last week in Berlin, visiting my (third) cousin and her parents for the first time! It was such a fantastic week; their family was exceedingly generous, so friendly and accommodating, and I had the chance to learn some German while exploring all over the city with my cousin, Vero.

By the end of the week though, I was happy to come back to Menton. I kept feeling overwhelmed by the sensation that I have less than two months left, and it feels like it's just now that places and people are beginning to feel more familiar and comfortable. (Isn't that always the way?) But really, all one can do is treasure the remaining time, and give up looking to the end of things, other than for how it serves as a reminder to make the best use of the present.

Today, we fêted a friend with a picnic lunch on the beach. Some third years were visiting for a couple of weeks (at Sciences Po, all of the students spend their third year abroad, usually in the Middle East or somewhere else in Europe, and some come back occasionally to visit), and we started talking about the things they miss, and the things I know I'll miss, about studying in Menton. I don't write this to be pre-emptively nostalgic, but rather to share some of the unique parts of this experience:

- Everyone is like a family. As an exchange student here for just a semester, I experience this to a lesser extent, but, given how nice it's been, even for me, I can imagine how tightly bonded the students become who are together, in mostly the same classes, for two years. You see your friends basically every day! Kind of like high school, I suppose.

- The town, based on my impression, is like a university campus. There are some parts of the town, and specific buildings even, where many students have apartments, making it feel like student residences are scattered throughout. I said it in the last post, but again, rare is the occasion when I walk more than ten minutes to get somewhere.

- Everyone's home is an extension of yours - at least, that's what one of my friends said today. And it really is kind of true. Because of how relatively close together everyone lives, it's easy to pop over for quick hellos or to borrow something, and you're not worried about staying late, because a five-minute walk home at the end isn't all that daunting, compared to the typical 30-45 minute trek (at least) with multiple transit transfers in Montréal.

- I love the conversations. To have the chance to study with students coming from everywhere from Brazil to Palestine to Morocco to Germany to Lithuania to Lebanon is an amazing experience. McGill is very international as well, yes, but Sciences Po Menton is so... densely international. At McGill, you can have your various small groups of friends, and a few of them may be from outside Canada or the US, but it's much more unlikely that everyone in a group of five will represent a different home-country, whereas here, that would be the norm. On top of this, being Middle Eastern studies/Poli Sci/International Relations/whatever the heck the label is, students, they're all generally well-versed (at least compared to me and most people I know back home) in Middle Eastern history and politics, plus, everyone is learning Arabic! It makes for a fascinating confluence of backgrounds and thus world-views, and I'm really going to miss this. I like being one of the more ignorant ones in a conversation about politics, because you learn so much more that way, and I definitely get to experience a lot of that here ;)

- I'm made inordinately happy by how many languages everyone speaks, and uses in regular conversation. It's not perceived as weird or pretentious or "trying too hard" to throw random French/Arabic/Italian/German/Spanish/etc. words into conversation, because chances are, some of the people you're speaking with have one, or more, of these as their native language. So, just for the record, if any of you back home are reading this, you're probably going to be referred to lovingly as habibi or habibti, because, at this point, I can't not :D

- The atmosphere is, generally, more relaxed. I know I'm biased, being an exchange student, but even though the "regular" students do have a crazy full course-load, the library still closes at 8pm every night, is also closed on weekends (which I actually won't miss), and it seems that a lot of people aren't overly hung up on a paper being turned in a day or two late. ... Rethinking this, I probably am not fully representing regular students' sentiments on this front... But, when you wake up to this:

And this is your view from the library/where one of your sailing/kayaking courses (which you can apparently get credit for if you're an actual Sciences Po student!) ...

And this is what a study session can often look like...

Then yes, I do stand by my statement that, on the whole, things are more relaxed.

So voilà, there are a few little pieces of what makes being here special! I'm leaving the people out of it for now, because that'll get me too worked up for the time being.

The Basics

Menton, pop. 28,833
Sciences Po, Campus Menton, pop. ~200
# of nationalities represented on-campus: 46
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Montréal, pop. 1,649,519
McGill University, pop. 39,349
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It's been a change. Size-wise, demographics-wise, subjects-wise... The question always comes up, after telling people what I study back home: "... How did you end up here?"
From research-focused linguistics and psych courses to far more theoretical political science, political philosophy, sociology, and history courses, all focused on the Middle East... Why indeed. Well, first off, doesn't this course list sound fascinating?

- Pensée politique arabe moderne (Arab Modern Political Thought, or, "PPAM")
- States and Societies in the Arab World
- Les grandes étapes de la question palestinienne (The main stages in the Palestinian question)
- Wars of Memories: A Perpetual Enmity Between East and West?
- Iran in a Changing World

Essentially, my (simplified) thought process in choosing my exchange location, for those of you who care, was as follows:
'I want to professionalize my French. ... France seems like a good place to do that. I don't know if I would do too well talking all my courses in French though... Hmm, well Sciences Po looks like one of the only exchange option schools that lets me do half and half. They don't offer any Psych or Linguistics courses though, shoot. Well, I was originally thinking about International Relations, and maybe Poli Sci, coming out of high school, and I would like to learn more about the field, so why not give it a shot! Woooo one semester and all my electives are eaten up... Oh well. Hopefully worth it. Ah, say! They have regional campuses, and a smaller city would probably be even better for practicing French, and, oh look, each regional campus focuses on a particular area of the world *link-link-link* the Middle East would be fascinating, and I could take Italian! Or Hebrew! Or Arabic! (Though I ended up being met with the sad news just before my arrival that you're not allowed to start at "Level 0" in any language halfway through the year. Sad day.) *googlegooglegoogle* The city the campus is in is on the Mediterranean on top of that... Ok it's a plan.'

And so, here I am! Living in the relatively small, retiree-populated town of Menton, just a thirty minute walk from the Italian border, a ten-minute train ride to Monaco, and a three minute walk to school (and to the beach!) I live with a "regular" first year student from France, M, and a full-year exchange student from Brazil, S - both are completely crazy and wonderful - in a tiny apartment in the old city, where a walk of more than 10 minutes means a location is "far away".

Those are the basics. Sorry that I took forever to post. Hopefully, now that this is established, I'll find time to write more... Don't get too excited and hold your breath or anything, but I'll do my best ;)

Gros bisous,
Christina

To see souls

You walk down the street, or cram onto the metro during rush hour, and you're surrounded by a mob of faces.
A body - that's just a bundle of cells, proteins, water, blood - atoms, matter.
The you I perceive is perceived as such because lightwaves bounce off the matter making up you, and I have these rods by night these cones by day that are oh, so, adept at visualizing you.
But that's not you, that's your body.
The stinky, ratty clothes that could really use a wash; the overly proper and too perfectly polished get up; your wrinkling skin that's too old for the time you've spent here; that long, warm, dark hair falling down to your waist; those knees that give way, frail from too many adventures necessity took you on; your protruding veins, your protruding eyes, everything bulging out of a body too thin -- every single physical feature by which I too often judge capacity for life and love and loveability -- none of those perceptions are really you. It's just light bent a certain way due to a living, breathing, moving mass of matter. Which does have a lot of beauty, yes, and a lot of stories to tell. You are, in part, your body, but you are also so much more.

Your soul.

That's what I can't see. That's what I usually don't see or think of when the light's just right and I'm moving down the street quickly, when I see you all everywhere, around me in a lecture hall for 650 beings. But your soul, your heart, your mind... That's what's going to last and that's what is there to love, first, and most.

I want to learn to see the beauty in every broken and perfectly created body - I want to see souls.

A few months ago, I was with a group of friends and we were discussing objectification, how we are all too focused on the surface. Two sides seemed to form, as we brought up strategies for how we're trying to fight this human tendency. One side said: strive to expand your definition of beauty, to perceive everyone as beautiful in a different way; the other: remember that beauty, the surface, isn't what's most important - don't let beauty matter so much to begin with.

I think though, that if we'd talked a little longer, there would have been no cause for disagreement, because I'm certain that the two can go hand in hand. It wouldn't do our capacity to appreciate beauty justice if we strove to stop valuing it, but, it is also true that it is not all-important, especially not as we define it. That's why I want to see hearts, minds, spirits, and to see these in and through the body. We do experience life through bodies after all - experiences write on each of us, our skin, fingers, eyes, and hair catching all the unassorted unfinished pieces of life story, and laying them out in one great, ever expanding and changing corpus. This, life's external imprint, is tied to its internal marks; it's in the interweave that we find people, and what is each person? As I believe it, each of us is an image-bearer of the divine. Once you see that, it's impossible for a perception of each individual as beautiful to not follow, and this beauty comes with a very expanded, supernatural definition indeed.

I want to remember that each person I perceive is not some static, 2D point that drifts in, then out, of my line of vision, not some body only, but this huge complex sphere, a planet with rings that overlap and interfere with many others' rings, just as mine do in each of the relationships I do and don't hold dear.

To not perceive a library or a metro full of ever-studying and journeying robots who drift in and out, relieving each other of their shifts, but as people that are every bit as dear to God and as much His image-bearers as I hope myself to be.

I want to see you as a bundle of emotion, intelligence, thought, aspiration, and love. To see your beautiful bright eyes, yes, but to see them as beautiful because they are reflective of whatever it is, within, that is you. Because you, you bear the image of the Most High God.

I want, desperately, to walk through life seeing souls; to not just perceive in a way that is limited by light and matter, but to see.

Off to France

Hi all,
Another adventure is afoot. In eight days, I'll be flying to Paris, then on to Nice, and from there bussing or riding the train a short way to the town of Menton. Why? Well, other than the fact that Montréal is brutally cold this time of year, while Menton has been dubbed France's most temperate city, there is also a university there. Sciences Po has a regional campus in this town, whose population is less than that of McGill's, at <30,000, specializing in studies pertaining to the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Ever since we first starting attending college and career fairs in grade ten at school, I've been on the lookout for universities with good exchange programs. McGill, of course, has partnerships with many universities worldwide; the reason I chose Sciences Po, and specifically its Menton campus, is... multi-faceted. I'll update this later as to why I chose to study a subject area (political sciences/international relations) that is so wholly different from my current program in linguistics and psychology; as it's New Year's Eve, and I've just been informed that we are moving on out, I'll leave you with this lovely Google Maps screenshot of a location 2.5 minutes from my apartment-to-be:

The Yellow Room

In going through notes from my time in Kalacha, Kenya, I found some memories of a place I'd like to sit quietly right now :


the yellow room - June 24th

I had a dream about a yellow room, once. What's funny is that I only remembered it just now, as I was titling this. The dream was significant, one of those that you write down as soon as you wake up, to be sure that you remember it right and that it goes unforgotten. The journal containing the specifics is sadly not at hand - all I recall is the funny feeling of that yellow room, how it was eerie because on the other side of the door lay a garden I had to enter, heaven in some form, but I couldn't leave the yellow room just yet; I think there was someone important to meet. Since memory's limits require that story be left for another time, I'll tell you instead of the yellow room in which I can currently be found.

~

The yellow is soft like butter, but every surface has layers of faded red stains - dust carried in by the wind, dirt rubbed on from years of life. Laundry hangs brightly, tidily, fluttering along the cord stretched across the room with every push of the entering wind. On the floor, rust-coloured dust collects in swirls, entering through the screen windows despite the slants of glass pane. You feel at peace here. It's calm, bright, and big. A space to be alone, to sit away, in that moving, windy silence. 

-- June 24, 2013

Where I've Been

To those of you who may actually have checked this blog during the summer, and wondered where on earth I went - I went to Northern Kenya. And told... nobody. At least, no one in the blogosphere. Sorry to anyone who this perturbed! But I have a hunch that most of you who read this regularly are my dear friends in real life, and so knew what was up ;)

But in case I'm being presumptuous, here's a link to where I put updates for this summer, in case you feel like playing catch-up :) 

www.northtokalacha.blogspot.com 

At Sea

I saw an island tip today, a little peninsula jutting out that looked exactly like the one I’d imagine the Pevensies and Trumpkin the Dwarf would’ve rounded in their small canoe right upon re-entry into Narnia at Prince Caspian’s beginning. The sand was all bright white, likely made of the same stuff I was standing on: millions upon millions of pieces of seashell, worn down to near grains by ages of tirelessly roving waves. Above that were the trees – tall, dark, and mostly evergreen; these forests must certainly be just as capable of containing ghosts as the ones in that book, or at least of inspiring rumours thereof.

Here in Montague Harbour, as it is all up and down the West Coast, the forests are so full of life the plants hardly know where to go. They grow at haphazard angles, branches jutting here and there, twisting, intertwining, weaving together a collective forest carpet: ferns, pines, salal, more, and, my and most people's favourite, the arbutus tree. They all reach out towards the sea. Everything, everything, is green – if not wholly, then bright moss grabs hold, ensuring that each living thing is capable of joining in to that wild and hallowed chorus, breathing: Life.

There are otters, sea lions, herons, oysters, and crabs in abundance. Sometimes I wonder if I was horribly cruel to kill all the barnacles I’ve killed. When all is growing, even the ground you tread is home to millions of creatures. Everything is alive. Even the rocks, great walls of stone, are in a constant process of slow transformation. They’ll be pockmarked with holes, like a wall in some city of cave dwellers, or sometimes have large scoops taken right out, as if the sea were a greedy child going in for too large a scoop of ice cream.

I love it here. There must be few places in the world, or in North America at least, where you can find so many distinct shades of green and blue, and where you share an instant bond of camaraderie and mutual life-love with every person you meet, confirmed in a wave, smiling nod, or friendly greeting.

If ever the chance comes your way, seize it, and simply be here, if only for a short time. Breathe in the salty air, float a long while, talk, walk, sit, explore a long while, and savour the remoteness of it all, how real and alive everything is. It’s good for the soul.