Paris and more!

Hello again everyone!

Once I again I have somewhat dropped the ball on blogging, but after a two week hiatus I am back with more fun tales from France. When I last wrote, I was preparing for an expose and a fiche bibliographique that were to take place the 17th and 24th of March, respectively. The expose went ahead as planned, but as has become common, the class for my fiche was cancelled. As for the expose, it went pretty well. I filled my time, and actually went a few minutes long, and had only a few minor errors in French that I noticed (I am sure there were plenty more that I did not). Overall, my classmates told me it went well and no one was falling asleep so I would say it was a success. As for the fiche, it will now take place on April 14th, which I am not looking forward to given that it is the same day as my French exam and the day after my paper for Sociology is due, but I suppose that's life.

It has become exceedingly common for classes to be cancelled here, though I am unsure why. Professors seem to miss and reschedule courses pretty often. The hardest part of this is that they reschedule based on the program they are in (all the students here are divided into groups and those groups all have essentially the same schedule), and the new times often conflict for us because we are in courses in both the first and second year. In addition, nothing is posted online, which amazes us given the emphasis the French place on environmental awareness and protecting the planet (you would not believe how much paper they waste). Instead, everything is printed out and put onto a poster board in the main lobby of the school. So, for those of us who do not have class on Mondays, it is often a surprise when we arrive at 8 am on Tuesday and no one is in class (Yes, this has happened to me, 3 times now). I have even tried having someone check the board for me, but sometimes they are posted so late in the afternoon that they do not see them.

Waiting in the street in Rennes for the bus

Moving on, the following week was relatively quiet after realizing that I no longer had to present my fiche. I have nearly finished it, but decided to look at other work, and prepare for my weekend in Paris. The trip began Thursday night (or Friday morning) at 2 a.m. As usual, we were told to be there by 2 (initially 1) and the bus did not show up until 3. Upon our arrival, we were greeted with a gift bag including a scarf, tshirt, stickers, some important logistical information for the weekend, and of course, a beer. As it turns out, this weekend is essentially a time for students from around the country (and who are supposedly its future leaders) to get very drunk, wear face paint and capes, and cheer until they can no longer make anything but a whistling sound when they speak. In fact, many of the students who came were not participating in any sport, they simply came for the party. This made the bus ride into Paris fairly interesting, though I managed to sleep the entire way despite what was an apparently rowdy bunch.

"Sciences Po Rennes, Allez! Allez! Allez!"

Upon our arrival, we went to the breakfast tent where all of the other Sciences Po schools were gathered and cheering on their respective towns. This resulted in the burning of many flags by enemy schools, attempted theft of memorabilia, and fights in an attempt to get it back or simply protect their honor. I, of course, have many wonderful pictures and videos of these events, but only a select few will make the cut as some of them can be a bit racy. We were also given a list of cheers to encourage Rennes pride and berate the others, but again, many of them are very, very offensive, so I will only list a few.

Burning Parisian Flag. Slogan loosely translates to "Shove it Paris!" (the French one is a bit more vulgar)

Soccer Field (Turf, it was very nice)

My Friday was focused mostly on soccer, since we had two games (at 1 and 3). So, as soon as we arrived (about 9 am) we went to the stadium to watch the earlier matches and get ready. As you may have guessed, we did not once start on time. The team we were supposed to play at 1 had a game schedule at 11 at the same field. They did not show up, however, until 11:45. So, our game did not actually start until about 2 because we had to wait for the game in between the two to finish. When we finally started, the game went pretty well. I scored the first goal about ten minutes in off of an attempted shot (that turned out to be a pass on the ground to the penalty mark). The second was scored minutes later by the other international student, a German student from last semester who came back just to participate, after a very impressive save from the goalkeeper deflected back into the box. The game stayed 2-0 until late in the second half when some defensive laziness in clearing gave the other team too many opportunities and they finally put one in. Nevertheless, we won 2-1 and were off to a good start for the tournament.

Game two began around 4:30, and was another solid match for us. This team was slightly worse than the first (though they were both good teams), but they had a stronger attack. Once again, I started the scoring in the first half after sneaking into the far post unmarked and putting away an easy pass from my teammate. Though the score stayed 1-0 the rest of the match, it was very exciting. After several brilliant saves from our goalkeeper and a save by the post (finally it happened to someone else!), we came away victorious. Given the  weak performance from the other Rennes teams, our fans were very happy. In fact, we were one of only 3 to make it beyond the first round of games.

After our two matches, we watched some of the other sports, people began their drinking and we headed to dinner at the University restaurant. This involved a lot more chanting, standing on tables, some food throwing, drinking, and a little bit of eating. After dinner, we proceeded to the party at the Palais des Congrès where they had music, dancing and an air guitar competition. The buses picked us up at 2:30 a.m. and, after first taking us to the wrong place, eventually got us to our hotel.

Saturday, I woke up extremely tired (we had to leave at 8 a.m. for our game) and headed to the location of our game for the day. We had made it to the semi-finals after our two wins on Friday, but had to wait until after the tie-breaker to see who and when we would play. Since the team we beat Friday won the tie-breaker, they said we could not play them again and so we played Paris. This game did not go so well for us. They only scored one goal in the first half off of a deflection from a defender right in front of the goal. In the second half, they got another goal after the linesman (a Parisian student...) missed an offside call. So, down 2-0, we decided to pull up our center defenders who were both about 6'5 and pretty solid attackers. However, we had a pretty weak bench and our new defenders were two slow to keep up with their attackers and Paris ended up scoring three more times (each on a breakaway) to end the game at 5-0. While this was a very disappointing result for us, the fans were all still very supportive (by now they were used to losing) and it meant we did not have to play at 8 a.m. the next day.

Us in the Centre Pompidou

After the game, I decided to hang around and watch a couple other games (I ended up taking a nap next to the field) and then we headed back to see Pétanque (Bocce ball, very popular sport which was actually invented in France). Following a little run in with the locals (they were not happy with the noise and damage being inflicted by the non-Parisians) and a win by the Pétanquers to take them to the semi-finals, we headed off to dinner. Once again, dinner comprised of chanting, drinking, food throwing, flares and even a fire alarm (they don't mean much here since they go off so often, almost always falsely, no one looked up from their meal except for the girl dancing to the 'music' from the alarm). After we headed toward what was supposed to be the "Barathon" (Bar crawl) and ended up just being everyone gathered in the Centre Pompidou (really ugly modern art museum) drinking and socializing. This was a pretty fun night, consisting of more cheering, flares and a crowd gathering to observe the crazy Sciences Po students, after which we headed back to the hotels for another night of little sleep.

"Elle est a nous (elle est a nous), Et pas a eux (et pas a eux),
Et ce qu'il faut c'est la garder, la cuillere en bois doit rester
 chez les Rennais!" (It is ours and not theirs and we must
 protect it, the wooden spoon must stay in Rennes!) to the
tune of "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In".

We cleared our stuff out of the hotel and departed to observe the finals for various sports around 10 a.m. Sunday. We managed to get completely lost on the way there, so we missed breakfast and just went straight to the Rugby final, which was between Paris and Toulouse. We watched for a few minutes, but instead headed next door to the McDonalds for some breakfast before watching some games that actually included our team. After breakfast, we returned to watch our sole surviving 'athletes', the Pétanquers. Eventually, we got slightly bored with it (it is really not the most interesting sport to watch) and ended up heading toward the center of town to hang out and see the more scenic parts of town. We stopped by Place St. Michel (with the famous fountain), Notre Dame, and ended up at a coffee shop near Centre Pompidou. We stayed there til dinner, then headed over to the university restaurant once again. After dinner, we departed for the final party of the weekend at the Grand Dôme where they held the pom pom contest and announced the winners of the events. First, I would like to say that the French idea of Pom Pom girls conforms almost exactly to every terrible film about cheerleading, minus the actual cheerleading. Essentially, the girls dress and dance like, well, sluts, and I use that term only because it is how the cheerleaders actually referred to themselves ("Salopes" in French). The routines involved little of the gymnastics element, if any, and mainly consisted of waving pom poms and disrobing by both the male (also called "Salopes") and female performers.

After these performances, there was about an hour of music and dancing, and finally the declaration of prizes. As the Rennais had hoped, they once again won (and I use the word "won" loosely) the "Cuillere en Bois" (wooden spoon) which is given to the team with the overall lowest score. The Parisians won the tournament overall, surprise, surpsise... Finally, there was some more chanting, and then the buses arrived to take everyone home. Since most of the students had Monday morning class, they were all very civil on the bus ride home (or so it seemed, I was sleeping almost the entire way). We arrived in Rennes around 7:30 a.m. and I headed back to my room to finally get some real rest.

While it was a long weekend, it was definitely worth the exhaustion and the money. I got to meet a lot more French people, hang out in Paris, compete in a soccer tournament, and experience a generally competitive and "school pride" type of atmosphere that I haven't had in a while. On the one hand, I fear for the future of the country after seeing their young leaders in a three-day drunken stupor, but on the other, it was fun to see them let loose for once and experience first hand the French that we normally only see in soccer games on television. I have, once again, gone a little long and detailed with my blog post, but I hope you enjoyed reading and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. I promise, I will have a new post for you this Sunday, though I cannot say it will be very interesting...

A plus,

Tom

Me and "Orange Man" (that's our goalie)